Disability Pride Month, held each year in July, is a time to celebrate the achievements of individuals with disabilities. Since the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990, the month of July has quickly become a time to honor the history of the disabled community while continuing the fight for accessibility for all. In honor of this historic moment, we’ve curated a collection of powerful books that celebrate and explore the experiences of those in the disabled community.
“The Jellyfish”
By Boum
"The Jellyfish" is a graphic novel translated from French into English that explores how the main character, Odette, copes with “the jellyfish” or floaters that continue to creep up in her vision. This story weaves together Odette’s experiences working in a bookstore, meeting a significant other, negotiating a relationship with her parent and managing the changes in her vision. The detailed illustrations of how the jellyfish impact Odette’s life are visually striking and powerful. This book is based in part on the author’s real-life experience of coping with eye conditions and then eventually losing an eye.
“Moving Mountains: Writing Nature through Illness and Disability”
Edited by Louise Kenward
This unique anthology draws together writers and poets with disabilities who describe nature from a variety of perspectives. For example, some of the authors, like Eli Clare, talk about how they interact with nature given their disabilities. Others, like Louisa Adjoa Parker, talk about how they are at times connected to and cut off from nature. Others discuss how they understand and engage with land through practices such as foraging. Although many of these stories may be painful to read, they are unique and intimate portraits of how people with disabilities are part of nature and how nature is part of them.
“Disability Pride: Dispatches From a Post-ADA World”
By Ben Mattlin
In the book, Ben Mattlin, a self-described lifelong wheelchair user, talks about changes in disability culture and advocacy. He notes that “over the past decades, the idea of disability has shifted from a medical signifier to an emblem of cultural identity. Being disabled no longer means just being limited or functioning differently from the majority in some fundamental way; it links you to a diverse group of others who share a history, a set of similar experiences, and often a sociopolitical axe to grind” (p. 198). Although many other histories address the growth of the disability rights movement, this book integrates the author’s perceptions of the movement as a person with disability and is a basic entry into the history of the movement.
“Mother Tongue: A Memoir”
Sara Novic
In this autobiography, Sara Novic combines her experiences as a Deaf person and a mother to both a Deaf and a non-Deaf child with a history of the Deaf community in the United States. She chronicles her experiences of attempting to “pass” as hearing until she could no longer, her exhilaration at finding a Deaf community and her struggles dealing with an ableist world that offers little attention to the needs of Deaf people. She details the atrocities of eugenics programs designed to eradicate Deaf people, and multiple attempts to quash sign language in favor of oral-only teaching for Deaf people. She also highlights the ongoing role of many people in attempting to save American Sign Language from extinction.
“Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire”
Edited by Alice Wong
This anthology draws together several authors with disabilities who reflect on different kinds of love, highlighting the joys and pains of building disability intimacy with partners, friends, pets, children and themselves. Authors also address related issues, such as the lack of marriage equality for people with disabilities, the pressure ableism puts on people with disabilities to push past their own limits and the difficulties of practicing self-advocacy in a world that wants people with disabilities to disappear. At the same time, many essays in the book express love, hope, joy and the indomitable will of people with disabilities to thrive in systems designed to harm them.