Social Disabilities

In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to ask: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, “Sick Woman Theory”, became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism—a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies—we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.

A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism - from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington - Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a "fire hazard" to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher's license because of her paralysis, Judy's actions set a precedent that improved rights for disabled people.

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?

Melody, the huge-hearted heroine of Out of My Mind, is a year older, and a year braver. And now with her Medi-talker, she feels nothing’s out of her reach, not even summer camp. There have to be camps for differently-abled kids like her, and she’s going to sleuth one out. A place where she can trek through a forest, fly on a zip line, and even ride on a horse! A place where maybe she really can finally make a real friend, make her own decisions, and even do things on her own—the dream!

We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in. Soon— but without knowing exactly when—he will likely have no vision left. Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him.

The Anti-Ableist Manifesto defines ableism as discrimination in favor of non-disabled people and helps listeners understand that ending discrimination begins with self-reflection. Tiffany Yu celebrates the power of stories and lived experiences to foster the proximity, intimacy, and humanity of disability identities that have far too often been “othered” and rendered invisible.

In Love Is a Choice, best-selling doctors Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth, and Paul Meier walk you through their 10 proven stages to recovery from codependency that results from external circumstances. Humans are susceptible to codependency because of our sinful tendency to use defense mechanisms to fool ourselves. In codependent relationships, deceitful games are played, and important Christian principles are often taken out of context and abused.

Sally Hobart Alexander continues the story of her journey into blindness in this uplifting tale of a life rebuilt and love renewed. Suzanne Toren’s perceptive narration perfectly expresses the emotions of Sally’s sometimes fun, often arduous, and always interesting journey. Also available is Taking Hold, My Journey Into Blindness, which tells the first half of Sally’s story.

As a senior non-commissioned officer of Delta Force, the most elite and secretive special operations unit in the US military, Command Sergeant Major Tom Satterly fought some of this country's most fearsome enemies. Tom is a legend even among other Tier One special operators. Yet the enemy that cost him three marriages, and ruined his health physically and psychologically, existed in his brain. Told through Satterly's firsthand experiences, it also weaves in the reasons for his career-long battle against the most insidious enemy of all: post-traumatic stress.

Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved.

In the second edition of About Canada: Disability Rights, Deborah Stienstra explores the historical and current experiences of people with disabilities in Canada, as well as the policy and advocacy responses to these experiences. Stienstra demonstrates that disability rights enable people with disabilities to make decisions about their lives and future, claim rights on their own behalf, and participate actively in all areas of Canadian society.

Lucy Edwards is a UK-based blind broadcaster, content creator, Pantene Ambassador and disability activist. At only 17 her world went to black. In an instant Lucy lost her eyesight due to a rare condition called Incontinentia Pigmenti. She had to learn how to navigate her life all over again, the beginning of an extraordinary journey to find self-acceptance and happiness. Lucy took to the internet and started to upload her experiences. Through sharing her day-to-day routine in her viral 'How does a blind girl?' video series, Lucy's story gripped the nation.

My friend Robby has a disability called ADHD. But that doesn’t matter to us. We play basketball, tell jokes, go canoeing, and help each other with our homework. I’m glad Robby is my friend!

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.

All thirteen-year-old Houston Stewart has ever wanted is to become an astronaut. His dreams feel like they're finally coming true when he's accepted to the highly-competitive Junior Astronaut Recruitment Program—if only he could bring his little brother, Robbie, with him. Ever since their dad left, Houston and Robbie have been inseparable. It's hard to tell where Houston's love of space ends and where Robbie's begins. But Robbie's cerebral palsy and epilepsy mean he needs medical attention at home, so Houston is forced to take this giant leap for the two of them all on his own.

When Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want—nor are they generally asked. In vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community.

Lamar Hardwick was thirty-six years old when he found out he was on the autism spectrum. While this revelation helped him understand and process his own experience, it also prompted a difficult re-evaluation of who he was as a person. And as a pastor, it started him on a new path of considering the way disabled people are treated in the church. Disability and the Church is a practical and theological reconsideration of the church's responsibilities to the disabled community.

In 1938, Donald Triplett of Forest, Mississippi, became the first child diagnosed with autism. Beginning with his family’s odyssey, In a Different Key tells the extraordinary story of this often misunderstood condition, from the civil rights battles waged by the families of those who have it to the fierce debates among scientists over how to define and treat it.

The first accessible guide to examine Sensory Processing Disorder, The Out-of-Sync Child touched the hearts and lives of thousands of families. Carol Stock Kranowitz continues her significant work with this companion volume, which presents more than one hundred playful activities specially designed for kids with SPD.

Christopher Reeve has mastered the art of turning the impossible into the inevitable. In Nothing Is Impossible, Reeve shows that we are all capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable hardships. Published on the eve of both his fiftieth birthday and the seventh anniversary of his spinal cord injury, Nothing Is Impossible reminds us that life is not to be taken for granted but to be lived fully with zeal, curiosity, and gratitude.