Art Disability

You can learn a lot from the movies—about sex and relationships, about business, about history. Sure, there’s a fair amount of fantasy, wish fulfillment, and glorious hair to exaggerate everything, but for better or for worse, films remain one of the most important ways that viewers around the world learn about other people and cultures. And almost since the dawn of the medium, movies have shaped the public’s understanding of and assumptions about disability.

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 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.

An approachable guide to being a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more accessible, inclusive place.

In From Behaving to Belonging: : The Inclusive Art of Supporting Students Who Challenge Us, Julie Causton and Kate MacLeod detail how teachers can shift from a behavior management mindset (that punishes students for bad behavior or rewards students for good or compliant behavior) to an approach that supports all students—even the most challenging ones—with kindness, creativity, acceptance, and love.

Is struggling to remember things something you find difficult? Often find yourself thinking that nothing can help? Or maybe you’re just constantly fed up of using prescription drugs and so called miracle cures. If this sounds all too familiar, then keep reading. We understand that memory loss and memory improvement are probably somewhat of a sensitive subject that you probably don’t like discussing with others. Looking for ways to help can be difficult and challenging and often leads to confusion when it comes down to what actually works and what doesn’t.

An unexpected journey. An unbreakable spirit. At 26, Non Reyes had it all—a loving family, a promising future, and an adventurous spirit. But in a single instant, everything changed. A devastating accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, forcing him to rebuild his life in ways he never imagined. In An Unexpected Ride, Non shares his deeply personal journey of resilience and rediscovery of purpose after tragedy. With raw honesty and a touch of humor, he reflects on the struggles, triumphs, and everyday victories of life with a disability—offering hope to anyone facing their own ...

"Higher Magic is my catnip. By what dark arts I know not, Floyd has summoned up a wonderful wizard-grad-school slice-of-life, replete with organizing, romance, anxiety, camaraderie, and courage. More please!" —Max Gladstone, NYT Bestselling Co-Author of This is How You Lose the Time War In...

Like many others on the autism spectrum, 20-something stand-up comic Michael McCreary has been told by more than a few well-meaning folks that he doesn’t “look” autistic. But, as he’s quick to point out in this memoir, autism “looks” different for just about everyone with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Disability and Theatre: A Practical Manual for Inclusion in the Arts is a step-by step manual on how to create inclusive theatre, including how and where to find actors, how to publicize productions, run rehearsals, act intricate scenes like fights and battles, work with unions, and deal with technical issues. This practical information was born from the author’s 16 years of running the first inclusive theatre company in New York City, and is applicable to any performance level: children’s theatre, community theatre, regional theatre, and touring companies.

Folk musician, Broadway composer, and disability advocate Gaelynn Lea's warm, funny, poignant memoir is a love letter to every kind of body, to music, and to making it work––inviting us to embrace all of life's experiences with heart and determination Gaelynn Lea was born with...

Blindness in the 1950s was a social stigma. Stephen's mother wanted a normal life for him, so he fought desperately to uphold the illusion of sight. For a child frantic to fit in, each day was an exhausting pretence. He managed to ride a bike, when even reading involved pressing his nose to the page and painfully forcing his eyes to concentrate. Head up, he strode through a carefully memorized labyrinth of streets, hoping to fool passers-by that he could actually see.

In 1958, Riva is one of the first children born with spina bifida to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured. Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture.

In 1992, Count Phillippe Pozzo di Borgo, on the heels of his wife's diagnosis with a terminal illness, suffered a paragliding accident that left him a quadriplegic. Forty-two years old, trapped inside his luxurious Paris town house, he was an outcast for the first time in his life. Abdel, an unemployed Algerian immigrant who had been an outcast for his entire existence, would become Phillipe's unlikely caretaker. Quick-thinking, unsentimental, and more than a little wild, Abdel surprises both himself and his employer.

Despite being a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2008, Philip Schultz could never shake the feeling of being exiled to the “dummy class” in school, where he was largely ignored by his teachers and peers and not expected to succeed. Not until many years later, when his oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia, did Schultz realize that he suffered from the same condition.

The Condition tells the story of the McKotches, a proper New England family that comes apart during one fateful summer. The year is 1976, and the family has embarked on their annual vacation to Cape Cod. One day, Frank is struck by his thirteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, standing a full head...

Rick Allen’s story is one of the most extraordinary in rock history. As the drummer of Def Leppard, he rose from the industrial landscape of Sheffield in the late 1970s to the height of global superstardom with albums like Pyromania and Hysteria. Then, on New Year’s Eve 1984, his life changed forever when a car accident claimed his left arm. What could have ended his career instead became the turning point that defined him. Allen not only survived—he reinvented drumming itself, pioneering a custom hybrid kit that allowed him to keep playing at the highest level. This definitive ...

Inspired by the Japanese concept of kiku—a more engaged, empathetic style of listening—a sociolinguistics researcher and writer offers a ground-breaking guide to more intentional and meaningful communication. No other life form turns noise into sound, sound into language, then language...

Stephen Kuusisto was born legally blind - but he was also raised in the 1950s and taught to deny his blindness in order to "pass" as sighted. Stephen attended public school, rode a bike, and read books pressed right up against his nose. As an adult, he coped with his limited vision by becoming a professor in a small college town, memorizing routes for all of the places he needed to be. Then, at the age of 38, he was laid off. With no other job opportunities in his vicinity, he would have to travel to find work.

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?

In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life.