Disability Politics

The success of food allergy activism in highlighting the dangers of foodborne allergens shows how illness communities can effectively advocate for the needs of their members. In Food Allergy Advocacy, Danya Glabau follows parents and activists as they fight for allergen-free environments, accurate labeling, the fair application of disability law, and access to life-saving medications for food-allergic children in the United States.

From the Periphery consists of more than 30 first-person narratives of everyday people who describe what it's like to be treated differently by society because of their disabilities. The stories are raw and painful, but also surprisingly funny and deeply inspiring. The oral histories describe anger, independence, bigotry, solidarity, and love - in the family, at school, and at the workplace. From the Periphery will become a classic collection that increases understanding of the lived experiences of people with disabilities.

How I Became a Human Being is Mark O'Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O'Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O'Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

Conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker have fascinated the world since the 19th century. In her captivating book, Chang and Eng Reconnected, Cynthia Wu traces the "Original Siamese Twins" through the terrain of American culture, showing how their inseparability underscored tensions between individuality and collectivity in the American popular imagination.

Connected at the chest by a band of flesh, Chang and Eng Bunker toured the United States and the world from the 1820s to the 1870s, placing themselves and their extraordinary bodies on exhibit as "freaks of nature". More famously known as the Siamese twins, they eventually settled in rural North Carolina, married two white sisters, became slave owners, and fathered 21 children between them. More than a biography of the twins, this is a study of 19th-century American culture and society that reveals how Americans projected onto the twins their own hopes and fears.

In this heartfelt, thought-provoking and often hilarious book, Lottie Jackson reflects on her experiences of living with disability: from the pitfalls of going shopping on a mobility scooter, and the headache of defining oneself on a tick-box form, to a slapstick scuffle with the so-called 'easy-pull' tights aid, and the intense pleasure of finally swapping a hospital gown for a slinky dress. Lottie captivatingly expresses the raw vulnerabilities, injustices and untold joys of disability, as well as the bizarre everyday occurrences that able-bodied people usually don't experience.

Ben Mattlin lives a normal, independent life. Why is that interesting? Because Mattlin was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a congenital weakness from which he was expected to die in childhood. Not only did Mattlin live through childhood, he became one of the first students in a wheelchair to attend Harvard, from which he graduated and became a professional writer. His advantage?

Whistle is a heartfelt story blending family connections, personal growth, and the magical bond between a mother and her autistic daughter, Kennedy. Centered around the unique communication method of a whistle sound, the story narrates Kennedy’s experiences and how the whistle became a bridge to understanding her inner world. Through imaginative storytelling, the book captures Kennedy’s challenges and triumphs, the unwavering love of her family, and the lessons they learn about patience, acceptance, and connection.

As a boy, severely disabled after contracting polio as a baby in working class Liverpool, Bert Massie found himself wondering why disabled people were expected to adapt to the world around them, and not the other way round. In his teens, he began to campaign for rights for disabled people, and having battled his way through prejudice and the education system to become a Bachelor of Arts and a qualified social worker, he became a prominent figure in the fight for fair treatment for disabled people leading to the ground breaking Disability Discrimination Act.

On July 4th, 2013, Connor Sparrowhawk, also known as Laughing Boy or LB, was found dead in a specialist NHS unit. Connor, who had autism and epilepsy, had a seizure while in the bath, and no member of staff was on hand to stop him from drowning. An entirely preventable death. Sara Ryan presents a frank, sometimes funny and touching account of her son's early life and preventable death and the unfolding #JusticeforLB campaign.

Developing a cybernetic model of subjectivity and personhood that honors disability experiences to reconceptualize the category of the human.

For over 30 years, The Silent Garden has offered parents of deaf children the support and unbiased information needed to fully realize their children’s potential. This completely revised third edition is a must-have resource that will help parents navigate the complex and unique challenges they face. Accessible, practical, and above all open-minded, The Silent Garden educates parents quickly and thoroughly about the many conflicting points of view on what is best for their deaf children.

Sight Unseen reveals the cultural and biological realities of race, gender, and sexual orientation from the perspective of the blind. Through 10 case studies and dozens of interviews, Ellyn Kaschak taps directly into the phenomenology of race, gender, and sexual orientation among individuals born blind, along with the everyday epistemology of vision. Kaschak's work reveals not only how the blind create systems of meaning out of cultural norms but also how cultural norms inform our conscious and unconscious interactions with others regardless of our physical ability to see. She exposes gender, race, and sexual orientation as unconscious and pre-verbal in the sighted, an aspect of implicit bias.

In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disabilities and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than 30 years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse.

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome. But books are his first love - Josh's earliest memories involve fantastic adventures between the pages of Gulliver’s Travels and a passionate infatuation with Fern from Charlotte’s Web. Everything in Josh’s life - from his Mormon upbringing, to finally finding love, to learning to control his tics through lifting - circles back to a close connection with books.

In The Price of Silence she takes a devastating look at how we address mental illness, especially in children, who are funneled through a system of education, mental health care, and juvenile detention that leads far too often to prison. In the end she asks one central question: if there's a poster child for cancer, why can't there be one for mental illness? The answer: the stigma.

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children

Come, Let Me Guide You explores the intimate communication between author Susan Krieger and her guide dog Teela over the 10-year span of their working life together. This is a book about being led by a dog to new places in the world and new places in the self, a book about facing life's challenges outwardly and within, and about reading those clues - those deeply felt signals - that can help guide the way.

An unflinching and luminous memoir that explores a father’s philosophical transformation when he must reconsider the questions what makes us human? and whose life is worth living? Before becoming a father, Chris Gabbard was a fast-track academic finishing his doctoral dissertation at Stanford. A disciple of Enlightenment thinkers, he was a devotee of reason, believed in the reliability of science, and lived by the dictum that an unexamined life is not worth living. That is, until his son August was born.

The first significant book on the history and impact of the ADA - the "eyes on the prize" moment for disability rights. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is the widest-ranging and most comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation ever passed in the United States, and it has become the model for disability-based laws around the world. Yet the surprising story behind how the bill came to be is little known.