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Non-Fiction Community Organizing/Disability/Social Justice
brown, adrienne marie. (2017).Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico, CA: AK PRESS.
Emergent Strategy is in many ways a community social justice primer. Throughout the book, brown calls on community action and engagement to herald and strengthen ties to social justice and includes lists, charts, and various strategizing methods to give anyone who wants to begin or enhance social justices causes on a personal, local, or greater community scale.
Invalid, Sins. (2017). Skin, Tooth, and Bone - The Basis of Movement is Our People: A Disability Justice Primer.
There are disability rights, but now there is also disability justice. In this ground zero book, Berne and others highlight the differences between rights and justice, especially for queer, black and brown disabled communities. As the name suggests, disability justice takes much of its philosophy from more grassroots social justice movements, but disability rights are not diametrically opposed. Rather there is a call to incorporate more voices and experiences than just the standard ‘default’ ‘white, cis, straight male’. By envisioning a more intersectional movement, Sins Invalid is calling for a reckoning for how communities and individual’s experiences can be better served through on the ground engagement and not just litigation.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Vancouver: Arsenal Press.
As the name suggests, this book is about care, and how it works and is work for anyone with a disability. Piepzna outlines the ways in which the medical industrial complex can fail or be prohibitive to those who need care, and offers instead ways that we can all take care of each other. They bring out the idea of carewebs—networks of friends and family, even strangers who can help out when needed. By bridging the gaps that are left from a more punative system Piepzna illustrates the ways in which care can manifest and thrive.
Non-Fiction Disability History
Catapano, P., & Garland-Thomson, R. (2019). About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times. Liveright Publishing.
As the title outlines, these essays are collected from the New York Times column that invited different disabled voices to share experiences and challenges. The column itself had some detractors as there was not always context given to what the topics were, and how they were relevant to readers who may not have any experience with disability or the topics presented. Nevertheless, these essays offer insight and food for thought about disability history, lived experience, and human rights.
Shapiro, Joseph P. (1993). No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.
One of the foundational texts of disability studies, Shapiro chronicles the ups and downs of the struggles and formulation of the passages of Section 504, IDEA and the ADA. He highlights many of the cases and situations that make up the history of disability in the United States, most notably perhaps Buck v. Bell and much like Geraldo Rivera’s expose on Willowbrook, takes the part of advocate and herald for the existence of and rights of the disabled. A unique account perhaps because it is so freshly written on the heels of the passage of the ADA, many of the issues and viewpoints Shapiro includes can feel in the present day to be of a bygone era. Nevertheless, the accounts herein are of value to understand how far the disability movement has come.
Non-Fiction Covid
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2022). The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press.
This is a book about Covid, about the changing, shifting, real-time landscape of what it means to be disabled, in need, in loss, with a global pandemic that was not handled to minimize damage, but instead to maximize profit for those who would get better at the expense of those who were written off as loss. Piepzna is angry, and scared, and vulnerable, but still persists in outlining the ways that disabled communities can thrive and how the resilience of disabled communities can pave the way for how anyone newly disabled or finding themselves suddenly thrown into the ‘disabled’ pit can draw strength and understanding from their circumstances.
Smith, T. K., & Freeman, J. (2021). There’s a revolution outside, my love : letters from a crisis. Vintage Books, A Division Of Penguin Random House, Llc.
Published in concurrent response to Covid at its height, these collected essays and poems bring together a myriad of voices from different marginalized communities to address the personal fears and determinations to fight for social justice in the midst of real-time chaos. Covid as a mass disabling event is front and center, but the contributors are not all disabled themselves, rather the essays and poems collected speak to how disability functions not just on a personal level, but on a social scale, and how the essayists respond to this new perspective.
Non-Fiction Politics/Academic Theory/Education
Dolmage, Jay. (2017) Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Dolmage is relentless in this polemic against the foundations of academic institutions into the present day. Piece by piece and angle by angle he delves in to the eugenic foundations of ‘institutions’, how they were often paired with nearby medical ‘institutions’ in order to supply a stream of subjects for doctors and professors, and even looks at the physical spaces to expose the very physical barriers created by the buildings themselves. He then turns his attention to curriculums, student populations, faculty and reputation to expose all the ways in which ableism is not just a casual byproduct, but a manufactured and perpetual product of the academy.
Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist Queer Crip. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
The intersection of feminist, queer, and disability studies meet in Kafer’s book that calls for a much more considered understanding of how these lens can not only work together, but also inform each other. Rather than silo theory and practice between these groups, she interrogates how the frameworks of feminism and queer theory are steeped in an otherness that disability studies or ‘crip’ studies as she coins them needs to acknowledge and incorporate. Disability studies are and can be academic, crip studies are and can be raw and human and accessible in a way that more reflects the needs and challenges of the disabled community.
Russell, Marta. Ed. Rosenthal, Keith.(2019) Capitalism and Disability. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
In these selected essays, Russell is ruthless in the pursuit of exposing the systemic underpinnings and mechanisms of capitalism and how it thrives off the existence of disability as both a control and lever of oppression. Most damning perhaps are the essays which pick apart the rulings of certain Supreme Court cases and shows again and again that even the most liberal of judges will side with corporate interests. Russell calls for a reckoning and each essay is incredibly persuasive in making even the staunchest capitalist pause.
Non-Fiction Memoir
Alshammari, Shahd. (2023). Head above Water. Feminist Press at CUNY.
A memoir of discovery and coming into one’s own, this beautifully written narrative handles how Alshammari reaches her goal of being a professor in spite of cultural pressure to the contrary, only to begin noticing changes with her body. Diagnosed with MS, she then has to navigate how to advocate and take care of her ever-shifting needs, whilst still teaching her students and guiding them through their own hopes and dreams.
Clare, E. (2017). Brilliant imperfection: Grappling with cure. Durham, North Carolina:
Duke University Press.
In this memoir cum poetry book, Clare talks about their life on a personal but also macro level. They use the framework of cure, delving into the various ways that society sets cure as a goal for almost any ill, and break down every way in which cure, while posited hopefully by those who don’t need one, can be a form of control and a leveraging of power to make the ‘uncurable’ or ‘sick’ feel subhuman without one. Interspersed with this polemic against cure culture are interludes of poetry written by Clare that relate back to nature which is used as a thematic metaphor in Clare’s life as a grounding place away from societal pressures. Clare also highlights the contradiction of cure insofar as chronic pain and illness can be overwhelming and even knowing the toxic positivity of cure culture, the desire to be free from pain or restraint can still exist.
Heumann, Judy. (2020) Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist. Boston, MA: Beacon Press
As the ‘godmother’ of the disability rights movement, perhaps no one is as deservedly feted as Judy Heumann. Her memoirs treads much of the by now familiar ground of the fight for disability rights, but she also talks about her childhood and her formative years at Camp Jened that helped her prepare for the Section 504 sit-ins and beyond. Her direct involvement in both the Clinton and Obama administrations in helping shape IDEA for education of disabled children, and her advocacy work with the United Nations and beyond, her life reads like a fairy tale of a social justice warrior whose cause was just, and whose poise and candor helped shape much of the current disability rights policies for the last thirty odd years.
ed.Wong, A. (2024). Disability Intimacy. Vintage.
Following the success of Disability Visibility (2020) in which Alice Wong compiled essays from contributors of her podcast of the same name to speak about various ways disability shapes the narrative of their lives, this new collection speaks to the more ‘taboo’ subject of intimacy and what being intimate means to the essayist. From sex, to kink, to the closeness of human touch without fear, and most importantly the bonds people share,these essays reveal how disability as capable of being/having/craving intimacy rather than anathema or taboo, are joyful, heartbreaking and human, just like anyone else.
Wong, A. (2022). Year of the Tiger. Vintage.
After so many years of championing the voices of others, Alice Wong finally writes her own story and shares how she has struggled and thrived through the years. She covers not only her upbringing, but also the circumstances and people she has met along the way who helped shape her advocacy and outlook. Throughout the narrative she uses the motif of the year of the tiger, the Chinese horoscope under which she was born. A tiger is a symbol of strength and power, but it is also one of pack and family. She demonstrates again and again, how it takes friends and family, as well as her own determination to keep persisting and existing, in a society that continually says she should not.
Non-Fiction Recovery/Healing
brown, adrienne marie. (2024). Loving Corrections. Emergent Strategy.
These essays handle topics such as racism, disability, and family, with a lens to view how we can have difficult conversations and be held accountable when we’ve caused harm or have hurt/been hurt by someone we know and care for.brown offers both personal experience and invites others to share how they have handled difficult situations where a relationship was worth saving, or worth ending to save oneself. How we engage with personal responsibility and accountability to others matters when we are trying to advocate and create change for something more than the status quo.
Dunn, L., & Gilbert, Z. (2021). A Wild and Precious Life. Unbound Publishing.
These contributions by mostly British writers address the challenges and circumstances of recovery and addiction specifically through the lens of writing. Poems, short stories, and essays blend with both being subject and inspiration for what writing while addicted/in recovery can look like, and how it affects the types of stories one writes. They also explore how writing can become expression of the desire that creates the addiction/drive the understanding of how they can recover.
HASSAN, S. (2022). SAVING OUR OWN LIVES : a liberatory practice of harm reduction. HAYMARKET BOOKS.
Harm reduction as a practice has had many layers of stigma attached to it. The stereotype of recovery/addict cycle or the twelve step program and relapse is not only reinforced as othering in society, but reified in mass media. In this remarkable book, Hassan shows how harm reduction from an inside perspective, of those who have been addicted/are addicted/need social supports can create systems that prioritize themselves rather than the current model of shame-based services. Similar but different to CareWork the idea of community led programs and advocacy is posited not only as a more socially positive approach, but also a more generative one. Using their own experience as an example, they guide the reader through how recovery and relapse do not need to be a vicious cycle.
Raffo, S. (2022). Liberated To the Bone. AK Press.
Susan Raffo is a bodyworker, but more than that she is a practitioner of community care. In this book she outlines not just how the body remembers trauma, but how the body remembers healing, and the ways in which how we practice care for ourselves and each other we generate more care. Using a community-based crisis response, where pain and healing have collective, not just individual consequence, can help re-contextualize how the concepts of pain and suffering v. wellness and thriving are not mutually exclusive opposing ideas. If we care for our communities and our past as well as our collective future, Raffo argues we will be able to benefit each other by our mutual support and intention.
Non-Fiction Storytelling
Fletcher, A. (2021). Wonderworks. Simon and Schuster.
In this interconnected work, Fletcher takes us through how different stories use frameworks and methods to prime our minds as readers to be receptive to the type of story we are being told. Whether it’s Edgar Allan Poe teaching us how to identify a mystery so we can sleuth our way through the story, or George Orwell helping us to understand how to identify propaganda, or Virginia Woolf calming us with the way she crafts a sentence, stories, Fletcher shows us, are more than just what we read. A fascinating understanding of the science of storytelling, this book is important as a guide to how we can use stories to create empathy and perspective shifts.