Review: Disability Visibility
Edited by Alice Wong

This was a collection of first-person stories written by people in the disabled community. It was edited by disability activist, Alice Wong.

I knew that reading this was going to hit me in all the places. It had me in my feelings, sometimes triggered, sometimes sad, sometimes in awe. I was reading this as someone who is a part of the disabled community due to my cystic fibrosis and being in respiratory failure. I also work with students with disabilities a counselor in my work at a community college.

There were so many incredible stories in this book! It touched on such a wide variety of issues and many of the authors were BIPOC, and it was inclusive of many different types of disabilities.

One of my favorite of the stories was “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time” by Ellen Samuels. This one resonated with me so much in the way she talks about “crip time”. We experience life in nonlinear ways, in stops and starts. For myself, one of the ways is experiencing old age in a young persons body. For some it’s being treated like a child no matter how old you are. She also talks about crip time as grief time. Grief for experiences that are not available to you, for losses that compound on each other, a grief over years lost to illness and years that will never come. Samuels spoke to the innermost feelings I struggle with because of my own disabling disease, and she gave voice to them. What a gift.

Overall, this book represented so many issues that need to be talked about. I connected with so many of the stories and learned something from all of them. I highly recommend this book. Please take the time to read this one.

Question:
What books can you recommend that are written by disabled authors, or that center a disabled person?