Social Disabilities

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.

Now, as more families like Michael's are affected by a growing number of disorders and difficulties ranging from autism to food allergies, the need for programs and paradigm shifts is greater than ever. Beates thus seeks to motivate churches to pursue ministry to children and adults with developmental disabilities. He works through key Bible passages on brokenness and disability to develop helpful principles for believers and churches, teaching them first to embrace their own brokenness and then to embrace those who are more physically and visibly broken.

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?

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community.

Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the 20th century: the closure of disability institutions and psychiatric hospitals. Decarcerating Disability provides a much-needed corrective, combining a genealogy of deinstitutionalization with critiques of the current prison system.

The modern world is built for neurotypicals. Needless noise, bright flashing lights, small talk, implication and ‘unwritten rules’; it can be a nightmarish dystopia as far as the autistic population is concerned. In Untypical, Pete Wharmby lays bare the experience of being ‘different’, explaining with wit and warmth just how exhausting it is to fit into a world not designed for you.

My name is Harper Drew. I'm using my new journal to take note of all the totally ridiculous things that seem to go on around me with my family and friends. I seem to be the only one who sees all of this stuff for what it is. Completely beyond normal. Recently I've been logging Drew Dial Ratings for all the mayhem. On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is someone to say or do something that would be less sensible than (for example)...a demented camel?

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.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how Black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds - the intertwinement of the mental and the physical - in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging Black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations.

Do you know children who get upset when their routines change? They might also struggle to see the big picture, make friends, solve a problem in real time, and read nonverbal communication. Meltdowns, tantrums, and other challenging behaviors might be common. This audiobook was designed to teach you how making small shifts in your language and speaking style that will produce important results.

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.

The audio edition of the best-selling middle grade novel about a spunky girl born without arms and a boy with Tourette syndrome navigating the challenges of middle school, disability, and friendship - all while solving a mystery in a western theme park. Aven Green loves to tell people that she lost her arms in an alligator wrestling match, or a wildfire in Tanzania, but the truth is that she was born without them.

Being a teen or tween is tough for anyone. And if you're on the autism spectrum, life can feel like a game you're playing without knowing the rules. Finally, teens can play the game of life with instructions. The 10th anniversary edition of The (Secret) Book of Social Rules reveals the essential secrets behind the baffling social codes surrounding making and keeping friends, dating and catastrophic conversation pitfalls, with all-new content on social media and talking about neurodiversity.

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.

Maggie and Momma love going for walks. During every outing, Maggie learns about something new. Today's no different! Momma has arranged for Maggie to meet lots of people in her neighborhood. They all have different jobs. They all come from different cultures. They all use different things to help their bodies. Maggie doesn't just stop to chit-chat. Rather, she gets to the bottom of things. By asking the right questions, she discovers how many people with disabilities use aids to help them out. Let's find out how they work, too!

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?

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.

Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom - the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged because she cannot tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy.

Natalie O'Rourke was an ordinary little girl from Birmingham in all respects save one: she was lonely. When she discovered how much she loved horses, she decided she wanted to grow up and run a riding stables. She wanted her stables to cater for children and adults with disabilities, additional needs and anyone who needed a friend—people who you might not expect to find riding, but who she knew could find happiness through horses, because she had.

Ione Gamble never imagined that entering adulthood would mean being diagnosed with an incurable illness. Watching identity politics become social media fodder from the confines of her sickbed Ione began to pick apart our obsession with self-care, personal branding, productivity and #LivingYourBestLife. Using her experience with disability to cast a fresh gaze on the particularly peculiar cultural moment in which young women find themselves, Poor Little Sick Girls explores the pressures faced—as well as the power of existing as an unacceptable woman in our current era of empowerment.