Disability Memoir

The Magic Circle tells the story of what happens when Charmaine Chan's sister Elaine is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. As the illness progresses, family members living on different continents gather together during Elaine's last days. Striving to distract Elaine from the worst effects of the cancer, Charmaine takes to the pen: conjuring up the vanished world of their childhood in Singapore, and discovering a way to keep her promise to Elaine's six-year-old daughter.

This memoir combines the drastic losses which occur due to severe episodic memory deficits with the greater agency currently afforded to all of us as made capable via ingenuity and technology. In this book memory loss is considered within the present-day environment of novel solutions heretofore unimaginable. All of us may never need to worry about recalling key life events ever again.

Andrew, 8, is autistic and bilingual. He speaks English and Chicken. With words limited by autism, Andrew lives in a fantastic world where chickens talk and superheroes come alive. But when he tells his pet chicken Frightful that his body is trying to kill him, it launches Andrew's family and an entire medical community into a decade-long quest for answers. This beautiful, fierce, and refreshingly honest memoir takes listeners on a mother's journey through the complex landscape of modern medicine to discover the healing bond between a boy and Frightful, the chicken who saves them all.

In 1959, at the age of 21, Max Starkloff was in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. His doctors doubted he would live longer than a few days, and, if he survived, the hope for his quality of life would be minimal. How did this young man with barely a high school education become the leader of a powerful disability rights movement and the founder of the Starkloff Disability Institute? This is his remarkable story.

In a candid and witty memoir, Jodi recounts how her life was transformed when, as a 33-year-old wife and mother, she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Unwilling to accept her new fate, Jodi's family searches for a doctor who will join their fight against the odds.

At a time when we are all more rudderless than ever, we look for the very best teachers and mentors to guide us. In Fully Alive, an unusual and gripping memoir, Timothy Shriver shows how his teachers have been the world's most forgotten minority: people with intellectual disabilities. In these pages we meet the individuals who helped him come of age and find a deeper and more meaningful way to see the world.

Bonner Paddock grew up just wanting to be ordinary. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age eleven, he guarded the truth about his health, building a normal life and keeping his secret from everyone—most of all himself—for the next eighteen years. But the sudden death of a friend’s young son due to cerebral palsy forced Bonner to reevaluate who he was and spurred him to pursue one breathtaking experience after another.

This is a very real and bloody look at the journey I made from 19 to 29. I will walk you through the icy halls of drug addiction and dealing, college in Santa Barbara (specifically Isla Vista), depression, suicide, and overdoses. The second part of the book I could only write just recently, as I was, by the Grace of God, able to live the life I knew I always should. Please come with me through the very real and honest look at what it was like to be a young man in the 2010s and how through a million close calls, I finally found life.

This book chronicles the journey of Eritrean-born Joseph Woldu. As a child refugee, he found himself having to adapt to changes of place, language, and customs; then as a man forced to relearn much of the same after involvement in a disastrous accident two days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. What makes Joseph's story so incredible is not that he survived change and tragedy, but how he continually found the strength to improve himself and his circumstances. His story reflects the importance good relationships play in our lives.

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend. Taylor had always struggled to make friends - she felt 'different'. Taylor never knew her father, and her mother wasn't around much. She just didn't understand people and was alone and scared most of the time. That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her - a protector. But when he moved away a few months later, she was easy prey.

From non-verbal to radio announcer, Good Morning, Blake: Growing Up Autistic and Being Okay lays bare—from cradle to adulthood—the myriad steps Blake has taken to find his voice and rightful place in society.

Condamné par la maladie, Olivier Goy partage avec la journaliste Anne Fulda son inlassable combat pour mieux faire accepter le handicap et lever des fonds pour la recherche, et, surtout, appelle à regarder et aimer la vie pleinement?! Olivier a 46 ans quand on lui diagnostique la maladie de Charcot en 2020. Une maladie neurodégénérative qui se traduit par une paralysie progressive des muscles, mais laisse au malade ses pleines capacités intellectuelles. Espérance de vie?: 3 à 5 ans.

An inspiring story of hope, strength and courage. After doctors said there was no hope for her newborn daughter, this mother refused to give up. Despite her daughter’s severe disabilities, Lucy went on to touch many lives with her presence and became her mother’s greatest teacher.

This is a philosophical and observational book based on the challenges and the triumphs of Paddy Slattery's life which include a severe spinal cord injury leaving him paralyzed, two near-death experiences, and his debut film hitting the cinema and Netflix just as Covid was beginning to make headlines.

In 2009 Cristina Nehring's brilliant first book, A Vindication of Love, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. An important new voice had appeared in American letters. Just as suddenly, Nehring seemed to disappear—only to reemerge like a bolt from the blue.

The autobiography is told in an honest and very candid way, from the very first diagnosis in 2011 right up to the present day, showing how I was forced to crowdfund to have my leg amputated, what it took to overcome the struggles of four operations, and what it meant for me and my young family.

Darlene was a small-town single mother from Arkansas. Bert was a small-town preacher’s son from Oklahoma. Polio crippled both of them as teenagers. When their paths crossed at a rehab center in 1952, these young adults questioned how anything good could come from this crippling virus. Bert’s faith in the Biblical passage of Romans 8:28 gave him hope that “Polio was not good, but God would bring good out of it.” Darlene’s journey to the rehab center was “the one way for God to get me in the right place at the right time.”

On June 10, 2008, Carol Decker walked through the hospital doors a healthy woman with flu-like symptoms and early labor contractions. Three months later, she returned home a blind triple-amputee struggling to bond with a daughter she would never see. Unshattered recounts Carol's fight for survival against sepsis and its life-shattering complications. From excruciating skin grafts to learning how to function in daily life without lower legs, a left hand, and her sight, Carol takes us on a personal and raw, yet inspiring journey.

Is it possible to find strength in struggle and purpose in pain? Ask Dr. April Jones, a young mother who battled her two-year-old son’s cancer while getting her doctorate. Her struggle to make the heart-wrenching decisions with her family led to a discovery of God, courage, and a happiness within that helped her transform scary misfortune into a joy-filled life. In No Mess, No Message, Dr. Jones shares her real, raw journey and reveals insight into how powerful thinking and strong faith can lead to inner healing.

Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, best-selling Growing Up series. It includes interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt.