LibGuides: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility: Accessibility Books

Books about Disability

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison Jonathan Evison has crafted a novel of the heart, a novel of unlikely heroes traveling through a grand American landscape, and most of all, a story that offers a profound look into what it takes to truly care for another person. Bursting with energy and filled with moments of absolute beauty, this bighearted and inspired novel ponders life's terrible surprises as well as its immeasurable rewards.
ISBN: 9781616200398
Publication Date: 2012-08-28
Disability Visibility by Alice Wong (Editor) ONE OF THE PROGRESSIVE'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent--but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people. From Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
ISBN: 9781984899439
Publication Date: 2020-06-30
The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education. But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder. Ronan was not expected to live beyond the age of three; he would be permanently stalled at a developmental level of six months. Rapp and her husband were forced to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about parenting. They would have to learn to live with their child in the moment; to find happiness in the midst of sorrow; to parent without a future. The Still Point of the Turning World is the story of a mother's journey through grief and beyond it. Rapp's response to her son's diagnosis was a belief that she needed to "make my world big"--to make sense of her family's situation through art, literature, philosophy, theology and myth. Drawing on a broad range of thinkers and writers, from C.S. Lewis to Sylvia Plath, Hegel to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Rapp learns what wisdom there is to be gained from parenting a terminally ill child. In luminous, exquisitely moving prose she re-examines our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a good parent, to be a success, and to live a meaningful life.
ISBN: 9781594205125
Publication Date: 2013-03-07
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
ISBN: 0446391301
Publication Date: 1990-03-01

Childrens' Books About Disability

Laughing at My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw With acerbic wit and a hilarious voice, Shane Burcaw'sLaughing at My Nightmare describes the challenges he faces as a twenty-one-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy. From awkward handshakes to having a girlfriend and everything in between, Shane handles his situation with humor and a "you-only-live-once" perspective on life. While he does talk about everyday issues that are relatable to teens, he also offers an eye-opening perspective on what it is like to have a life threatening disease.
ISBN: 9781626720077
Publication Date: 2014-10-14
The Girl Who Thought in Pictures by Julia Finley Mosca; Daniel Rieley (Illustrator) NSTA Best STEM Books for K-12 Selection NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Books Selection Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award Recipient A Mighty Girl Book of the Year If you've ever felt different, if you've ever been low, if you don't quite fit in, there's a name you should know... Meet Dr. Temple Grandin--one of the world's quirkiest science heroes! When young Temple was diagnosed with autism, no one expected her to talk, let alone become one of the most powerful voices in modern science. Yet, the determined visual thinker did just that. Her unique mind allowed her to connect with animals in a special way, helping her invent groundbreaking improvements for farms around the globe! The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin is the first book in a brand new educational series about the inspirational lives of amazing scientists. In addition to the illustrated rhyming tale, you'll find a complete biography, fun facts, a colorful timeline of events, and even a note from Temple herself!
ISBN: 9781943147304
Publication Date: 2017-08-29
Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin ANew York Times Bestseller! Rose Howard is obsessed with homonyms. She's thrilled that her own name is a homonym, and she purposely gave her dog Rain a name with two homonyms (Reign, Rein), which, according to Rose's rules of homonyms, is very special. Not everyone understands Rose's obsessions, her rules, and the other things that make her different - not her teachers, not other kids, and not her single father. When a storm hits their rural town, rivers overflow, the roads are flooded, and Rain goes missing. Rose's father shouldn't have let Rain out. Now Rose has to find her dog, even if it means leaving her routines and safe places to search. Hearts will break and spirits will soar for this powerful story, brilliantly told from Rose's point of view.
ISBN: 9780312643003
Publication Date: 2014-10-07
(Don't) Call Me Crazy by Kelly Jensen A Washington Post Best Children's Book of 2018 Who's Crazy?   What does it mean to be crazy? Is using the word crazy offensive? What happens when a label like that gets attached to your everyday experiences?   To understand mental health, we need to talk openly about it. Because there's no single definition of crazy, there's no single experience that embodies it, and the word itself means different things--wild? extreme? disturbed? passionate?--to different people.   In (Don't) Call Me Crazy, thirty-three actors, athletes, writers, and artists offer essays, lists, comics, and illustrations that explore a wide range of topics: their personal experiences with mental illness, how we do and don't talk about mental health, help for better understanding how every person's brain is wired differently, and what, exactly, might make someone crazy.   If you've ever struggled with your mental health, or know someone who has, come on in, turn the pages . . . and let's get talking.  
ISBN: 9781616207816
Publication Date: 2018-10-02
Rescue and Jessica by Jessica Kensky; Patrick Downes; Scott Magoon (Illustrator) Based on a real-life partnership, the heartening story of the love and teamwork between a girl and her service dog will illuminate and inspire. Rescue thought he'd grow up to be a Seeing Eye dog -- it's the family business, after all. When he gets the news that he's better suited to being a service dog, he's worried that he's not up to the task. Then he meets Jessica, a girl whose life is turning out differently than the way she'd imagined it, too. Now Jessica needs Rescue by her side to help her accomplish everyday tasks. And it turns out that Rescue can help Jessica see after all: a way forward, together, one step at a time. An endnote from the authors tells more about the training and extraordinary abilities of service dogs, particularly their real-life best friend and black lab, Rescue.
ISBN: 0763696048
Publication Date: 2018-04-03

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Disability Publishers

Reclamation Press
Publishes books by people within diverse disability communities.

Authors With Disabilities

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discoverypersonal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.
ISBN: 9780140169300
Publication Date: 1992-05-01
Beauty Is a Verb by Sheila Black (Editor); Jennifer Bartlett; Michael Northen (Editor) Chosen by the American Library Association as a 2012 Notable Book in Poetry. Beauty is a Verb is a ground-breaking anthology of disability poetry, essays on disability, and writings on the poetics of both. Crip Poetry. Disability Poetry. Poems with Disabilities. This is where poetry and disability intersect, overlap, collide and make peace. "[BEAUTY IS A VERB] is going to be one of the defining collections of the 21st century...the discourse between ability, identity & poetry will never be the same." --Ron Silliman, author ofIn The American Tree "This powerful anthology succeeds at intimately showing...disability through the lenses of poetry. What emerges from the book as a whole is a stunningly diverse array of conceptions of self and other."< --Publishers Weekly, starred review From "Beauty and Variations" by Kenny Fries: How else can I quench this thirst? My lips travel down your spine, drink the smoothness of your skin. I am searching for the core: What is beautiful? Who decides? Can the laws of nature be defied? Your body tells me: come close. But beauty distances even as it draws me near. What does my body want from yours? My twisted legs around your neck. You bend me back. Even though you can't give the bones at birth I wasn't given, I let you deep inside. You give me--what? Peeling back my skin, you expose my missing bones. And my heart, long before you came, just as broken. I don't know who to blame. So each night, naked on the bed, my body doesn't want repair, but longs for innocence. If innocent, despite the flaws I wear, I am beautiful. Sheila Blackis a poet and children's book writer. In 2012, Poet Laureate Philip Levine chose her as a recipient of the Witter Bynner Fellowship. Disability activistJennifer Bartlettis a poet and critic with roots in the Language school. Michael Northenis a poet and the editor ofWordgathering: A Journal of Poetics and Disability.
ISBN: 9781935955054
Publication Date: 2011-10-11
Call Me Ahab by Anne Finger Imagine a Hollywood encounter between Helen Keller and Frida Kahlo, “two female icons of disability.” Or the story of “Moby Dick, or, The Leg,” told from Ahab’s perspective. What if Vincent Van Gogh resided in a twentieth-century New York hotel, surviving on food stamps and direct communications with God? Or if the dwarf pictured in a seventeenth-century painting by Velazquez should tell her story? And, finally, imagine the encounter between David and Goliath from the Philistine’s point of view. nbsp; These are the characters who people history and myth as counterpoints to the “normal.” And they are also the characters who populate Anne Finger’s remarkable short stories. Affecting but never sentimental, ironic but never cynical, these wonderfully rich and comic tales reimagine life beyond the margins of “normality.”
ISBN: 9780803225336
Publication Date: 2009-09-01
The Deaf Heart by Willy Conley Told through a series of quirky, irreverent short stories and letters home during the early 1980s, The Deaf Heart chronicles a year in the life of Dempsey "Max" McCall, a Deaf biomedical photography resident at a teaching hospital on the island of Galveston, Texas. Max strives to become certified as a Registered Biological Photographer while straddling the deaf and hearing worlds. He befriends Reynaldo, an impoverished Deaf Mexican, and they go on a number of unusual escapades around the island.        At the hospital, Max has to contend with hearing doctors, nurses, scientists, and teachers. While struggling through the rigors of his residency and running into bad luck in meeting women, Max discovers an ally in his hearing housemate Zag, a fellow resident who is also vying for certification. Toward the end of his residency, Max meets Maddy, a Deaf woman who helps bring balance to his life.        Author Willy Conley's stories, some humorous, some poignant, reveal Max's struggles and triumphs as he attempts to succeed in the hearing world while at the same time navigating the multicultural and linguistic diversity within the Deaf world.
ISBN: 9781563686030
Publication Date: 2015-10-30
Mean Little Deaf Queer by Terry Galloway 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. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, she writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and living in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.
ISBN: 9780807072905
Publication Date: 2009-06-01
Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto "The sensorium of the blind who possess some marginal vision is by turns magical and disturbing," writes poet and educator Stephen Kuusisto. "My eyes dance in a private, rising field of silver threads, teeming greens, roses, and smoke." This is the record of a handicapped life, but it is also an extraordinary literary achievement. Stephen Kuusisto has been legally blind since birth, and in this stunning memoir he has succeeded in translating his opaque, kaleidoscopic world of shape and color into poetic and luminous prose. Brought up to disavow his blindness, Kuusisto spent much of his life trying to pass as a sighted man, traveling everywhere at dizzying speeds without a cane. Still, he writes, he remained ashamed of his "blind self." As a child with bottle-lens glasses, he was ridiculed by his classmates; as an adolescent he struggled first with obesity, then anorexia; as a young adult, in love with reading, he suffered the derision of teachers who felt he could not possibly keep up with his studies. Fueled by his passion for the written word, Kuusisto nonetheless persisted, successfully, in conquering academia--until a devastating accident forced him to acquire the white cane at last. Almost immediately the cane became his "divining rod," but it was only a matter of time before he felt the need for a more powerful ally. Enter Corky, a two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever who became his guiding eyes and changed his life forever.
ISBN: 0385316151
Publication Date: 1997-12-29
Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked by Sheila Black (Editor); Annabelle Hayes; Michael Northen (Editor) "I remember I believed all my problems would be solved, if only I were beautiful. Then I was beautiful." --Jonathan Mack, from his story "The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked." Welcome to the worlds of the disabled. The physically disabled. The mentally disabled. The emotionally disabled. What does that word "disabled" mean anyway? Is there a right way to be crippled? Editors Sheila Black and Michael Northen (co-editors of the highly praised anthologyBeauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability) join newcomer Annabelle Hayse to present short stories by Dagoberto Gilb, Anne Finger, Stephen Kuusisto, Thom Jones, Lisa Gill, Floyd Skloot, and others. These authors -- all who experience the "disability" they write about -- crack open the cage of our culture's stereotypes. We look inside, and, through these people we thought broken, we uncover new ways of seeing and knowing.
ISBN: 9781941026359
Publication Date: 2017-02-07

Book Awards

The Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award
This award recognizes authors, illustrators, and publishers of fictional and biographical children, intermediate, and young adult books that portray individuals with developmental disabilities.
Schneider Family Book Award
This award recognizes an author or illustrator of a book that represents an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.

Disability Studies Textbooks

Addressing Ableism by Jennifer Scuro; Devonya N. Havis (As told to); Lydia X. Z. Brown (As told to); Joel Michael Reynolds (Foreword by) Addressing Ableism is a set of philosophical meditations outlining the scale and scope of ableism. By explicating concepts like experience, diagnosis, precariousness, and prosthesis, Scuro maps out the institutionalized and intergenerational forms of this bias as it is analogous and yet also distinct from other kinds of dehumanization, discrimination, and oppression. This project also includes a dialogical chapter on intersectionality with Devonya Havis and Lydia Brown, a philosopher and writer/activist respectively. Utilizing theorists like Judith Butler, Tobin Siebers, Emmanuel Levinas, and Hannah Arendt to address ableism, Scuro thoroughly critiques the neoliberal culture and politics that underwrites ableist affections and phobias. This project exposes the many material and non-material harms of ableism, and it offers multiple avenues to better confront and resist ableism in its many forms. Scuro provides crucial insights into the many uninhabitable and unsustainable effects of ableism and how we might revise our intentions and desires for the sake of a less ableist world.
ISBN: 9781498540742
Publication Date: 2017-10-25
Barriers and Belonging by Michelle Jarman (Editor); Leila Monaghan (Editor); Alison Quaggin Harkin (Editor) What is the direct impact that disability studies has on the lives of disabled people today? The editors and contributors to this essential anthology, Barriers and Belonging, provide thirty-seven personal narratives thatexplore what it means to be disabled and why the field of disability studies matters. The editors frame the volume by introducing foundational themes of disability studies. They provide a context of how institutions--including the family, schools, government, and disability peer organizations--shape and transform ideas about disability. They explore how disability informs personal identity, interpersonal and community relationships, and political commitments. In addition, there are heartfelt reflections on living with mobility disabilities, blindness, deafness, pain, autism, psychological disabilities, and other issues. Other essays articulate activist and pride orientations toward disability, demonstrating the importance of reframing traditional narratives of sorrow and medicalization. The critical, self-reflective essays in Barriers and Belonging provide unique insights into the range and complexity of disability experience.
ISBN: 9781439913871
Publication Date: 2017-02-06
Cultural Disability Studies in Education by David Bolt Over the last few decades disability studies has emerged not only as a discipline in itself but also as a catalyst for cultural disability studies and Disability Studies in Education. In this book the three areas become united in a new field that recognises education as a discourse between tutors and students who explore representations of disability on the levels of everything from academic disciplines and knowledge to language and theory; from received understandings and social attitudes to narrative and characterisation. Moving from late nineteenth to early twenty-first-century representations, this book combines disability studies with aesthetics, film studies, Holocaust studies, gender studies, happiness studies, popular music studies, humour studies, and media studies. In so doing it encourages discussion around representations of disability in drama, novels, films, autobiography, short stories, music videos, sitcoms, and advertising campaigns. Discussions are underpinned by the tripartite model of disability and so disrupt one-dimensional representations. Cultural Disability Studies in Education encourages educators and students to engage with disability as an isolating, hurtful, and joyful experience that merits multiple levels of representation and offers true potential for a non-normative social aesthetic. It will be required reading for all scholars and students of disability studies, cultural disability studies, Disability Studies in Education, sociology, and cultural studies.
ISBN: 9781138103252
Publication Date: 2018-10-10
Disability Services and Disability Studies in Higher Education by Christy M. Oslund Disability Services and Disability Studies in Higher Education considers how the two fields of disability studies and disability services in institutions of higher education impact each other. Disability Studies is centered in the classroom, an interdisciplinary field that teaches about the social contexts of disability, while Disability Services works outside the classroom, making sure students with disabilities are able to access classroom spaces and educational material. Oslund explores the effect of the services on the larger societies in which they are located, students who encounter the respective fields, and those who self-identify as disabled or have an identity of disability posited on them by the society in which they live.
ISBN: 9781137502438
Publication Date: 2014-11-28
Disability Studies by Dan Goodley Passionate, engaging and challenging, this second edition of the ground-breaking Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction is a contemporary introduction to this diverse and complex field. Taking an interdisciplinary and critical approach, the book: examines a diverse range of theories and perspectives and engages with current debates in the field explores key areas of analysis, with chapters devoted to the individual, society, community and education applies a global perspective encompassing examples from the UK, Australia, Scandinavia, the US, and Canada. Encouraging and stimulating readers using thought-provoking questions, exercises and activities, Disability Studies is a rich and rewarding read for students and researchers engaging with disability across the social sciences.  
ISBN: 9781446280683
Publication Date: 2016-12-14
The Disability Studies Reader by Lennard J. Davis (Editor) The Disability Studies Readeris the most comprehensive introduction to in disability studies. Now in its third edition, it contains a wide range of seminal, cutting-edge and classic articles in the field. The collection covers cultural studies, identity politics, literary criticism, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, the visual arts, gender and race studies, as well as memoir, poetry, fiction, and prose non-fiction.
ISBN: 9780415873741
Publication Date: 2010-03-02
Feminist Disability Studies by Kim Q. Hall (Editor) Disability, like questions of race, gender, and class, is one of the most provocative topics among theorists and philosophers today. This volume, situated at the intersection of feminist theory and disability studies, addresses questions about the nature of embodiment, the meaning of disability, the impact of public policy on those who have been labeled disabled, and how we define the norms of mental and physical ability. The essays here bridge the gap between theory and activism by illuminating structures of power and showing how historical and cultural perceptions of the human body have been informed by and contributed to the oppression of women and disabled people.
ISBN: 9780253356628
Publication Date: 2011-10-24
Foundations of Disability Studies by Matthew Wappett (Editor); Katrina Arndt (Editor) A collection of eight essays by scholars who have published extensively within the disability studies literature, and who have helped build the field to its current state. Includes contributions from Robert Bogdan, Doug Biklen, Susan Schweik, and more.
ISBN: 9781137373526
Publication Date: 2013-11-21
Keywords for Disability Studies by Rachel Adams (Editor); Benjamin Reiss (Editor); David Serlin (Editor) Keywords for Disability Studies aims to broaden and define the conceptual framework of disability studies for readers and practitioners in the field and beyond. The volume engages some of the most pressing debates of our time, such as prenatal testing, euthanasia, accessibility in public transportation and the workplace, post-traumatic stress, and questions about the beginning and end of life. Each of the 60 essays in Keywords for Disability Studies focuses on a distinct critical concept, including "ethics," "medicalization," "performance," "reproduction," "identity," and "stigma," among others. Although the essays recognize that "disability" is often used as an umbrella term, the contributors to the volume avoid treating individual disabilities as keywords, and instead interrogate concepts that encompass different components of the social and bodily experience of disability. The essays approach disability as an embodied condition, a mutable historical phenomenon, and a social, political, and cultural identity. An invaluable resource for students and scholars alike, Keywords for Disability Studies brings the debates that have often remained internal to disability studies into a wider field of critical discourse, providing opportunities for fresh theoretical considerations of the field's core presuppositions through a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Visit keywords.nyupress.org for online essays, teaching resources, and more.
ISBN: 9781479841158
Publication Date: 2015-08-14