Disability Memoir

A young man once called unteachable journeys across America to investigate the lives of those, like himself, who are forced to create new ways of living in order to survive.

A serious illness destroyed Helen Keller's sight and hearing before she reached the age of two. At seven, she was introduced to Ann Sullivan, the beloved teacher and friend who helped Helen to make contact with her world. Through sheer determination and resolve, Helen learned to speak, read, and write, and prepared herself for entry into prep school by the age of 16. She later enrolled at Radcliffe and graduated with honors. Her motto: "There are no handicaps, only challenges."

When PhD candidate Sarah Vallance is thrown from a horse and suffers a jarring blow to the head, she believes she walks away unscathed. The next morning, things take a sharp turn as she’s quickly led from work to the emergency room. By the end of the week, a neurologist delivers a devastating prognosis: Sarah suffered a traumatic brain injury that has caused her IQ to plummet, with no hope of recovery. Her brain has irrevocably changed.

Darryl Jefferson was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at the age of eight and encountered many hurdles in life due to the condition. Despite this, he persevered through many challenges in school, work, relationships, and the military. In this story, he takes us on a journey through one man's experience of living with autism and its effects on school, work, relationships, friendships, and many other life challenges.

Erik Weihenmayer is the first and only blind person to summit Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Descending carefully, he and his team picked their way across deep crevasses and through the deadly Khumbu Icefall; when the mountain was finally behind him, Erik knew he was going to live. His expedition leader slapped him on the back and said something that would affect the course of Erik’s life: “Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you ever do.” No Barriers is Erik’s response to that challenge.

It's not what I lost. It's what I've found. I was only 17, just a girl, when God asked me for everything I had...my health, my hopes, my independence, my dreams, my freedom, and my mobility. He took it all. I was so angry with him that I tried to push him away. God relentlessly held me more closely. Looking back, 40 years later, I understand that God has changed and healed me - my heart and my mind - in the most unexpected ways, giving me rubies of his wisdom about an unbending faith and an experience of his mercy I can now tell you about.

On Halloween day 1990, Sterling Krysler—husband, father, pilot, newly arrived in Hawai'i—suffered a catastrophic spinal cord injury while body surfing at a local beach. Ever the optimist, Sterling accepted the life-changing injury becoming advocate and inspiration to many in the "disability community." This is a family-centered story brimming with love, joy, and humor. This is his story—before and after.

Jeff Bauman woke up on Tuesday, April 16th, 2013, and he had no legs. Just 30 hours prior, Jeff was surrounded by revelry at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. The first bomb went off at his feet as he awaited his girlfriend's finish. When Jeff awoke days later from hours of surgery, rather than take stock of his now completely altered life, Jeff ripped out his breathing tube and tried to speak. He couldn't. Jeff asked for a pad and paper and he wrote down seven words, "Saw the guy. Looked right at me," setting off one of the biggest manhunts in the country's history....

She's never taught a class in her life. But when the City of Chicago calls on blind writer Beth Finke to teach a memoir-writing class for older adults, she reluctantly agrees. What she learns about her students, their stories, and herself will move and inspire you. Written the way Beth hears life, you will come to know and love Minerva, Wanda, Hannelore, and the whole colorful cast of characters who build a community around Beth's classes. Generously sprinkled with excerpts in her students' own voices, Beth's book will convince you to get your own stories down on paper.

Carly-Jay Metcalfe was born with cystic fibrosis, survived a double-lung transplant at the age of 21 and faced a rare cancer at the age of 30. What she has endured should have killed her, but her humour, courage and optimism became her best survival skills. From her hospitalised childhood to her many friendships, loves and losses, Metcalfe shares the fickle nature of life with candour and warmth. She writes with compelling insight about organ donation, opioid addiction and survivor's guilt, while still managing to find joy amongst the wreckage.

Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with motor neurone disease, also known as ALS, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand. Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: 50 things he wanted Royd to do after his death.

In her moving account of how she came to understand the world around her despite being blind and deaf since childhood, Helen Keller confirms that no physical obstacle can hinder the achievements of the human mind. Included with Keller's poignant autobiography are her letters, spanning 15 years, which reveal her remarkable intellectual growth and empathic soul. Commentary by her teacher, Anne Sullivan, and the book's original editor is also featured, providing illuminating insight from two of Keller's closest companions.

He grew up, he says, at "belt-buckle level" and stayed there until Kevan's beloved posse decided to leave his wheelchair at the Atlanta airport, board a plane for France, and have his friends carry him around Europe to accomplish their dream to see the world together! Kevan's beloved posse traveled to Paris, England, and Ireland, where, in the climax of their adventure, they scale 600 feet up to the 1,400-year-old monastic fortress of Skellig Michael.

Blindness. A tough topic to discuss? Not anymore. In this groundbreaking book, listeners will see blindness in a whole new light. In fact, the compelling and entertaining stories will not only change perceptions of blindness, they’ll make listeners forget the people featured are actually blind.

In 1972, at the age of 21, John Callahan was involved in a car crash that severed his spine and made him a quadriplegic. A heavy drinker since the age of 12, the accident could have been the beginning of a downward spiral. Instead, it sparked a personal transformation. After extensive physical therapy, he was eventually able to grasp a pen in his right hand and make rudimentary drawings. By 1978, Callahan had sworn off drinking for good and begun to draw cartoons. Over the next three decades, Callahan would become one of the nation's most beloved cartoonists.

From the time she was a toddler, Lou Ann Walker acted as the ears and voice for her parents, who had lost their hearing at a young age. As soon as she was old enough to speak, her childhood ended, and she immediately assumed the responsibility of interpreter - translating doctors’ appointments and managing her parents’ business transactions. Their family life was warm and loving, but outside the home, they faced a world that misunderstood and often rejected them.

As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. And she knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.

This is my inspirational true story of childhood sexual abuse that I endured. The abuse was a secret, even to me, due to the fact that all the painful images were locked up in my subconscious for close to 37 years.

It was a crisp winter day when six-year-old Kacey McCallister lost both of his legs, forever altering the course of his life. This unthinkable trial could have broken him, but from that day forward, he chose to rise above his circumstances and learn to live without limits. For those struggling to find hope in the depths of physical, spiritual, or emotional trials, this incredible story of one man’s unbreakable courage will inspire and motivate listeners to not only survive, but thrive amidst life’s challenges.

Find Another Dream, written and performed by Maysoon Zayid, is the true story of how a Muslim Jersey girl with cerebral palsy creates her own path to stardom. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, as a child she dreamed of one day dancing on Broadway. As a teen, a bubble-bursting choreographer told her to “find another dream”, so she set her sights on becoming a soap star, undeterred by the fact that the odds were against her.