Books
Being Heumann
One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human.
A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism.
Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.
Crippled
In austerity Britain, disabled people have been recast as worthless scroungers. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and the media alike have made the case that Britain’s 12 million disabled people are nothing but a drain on the public purse.
In Crippled, journalist and campaigner Frances Ryan exposes the disturbing reality, telling the stories of those most affected by this devastating regime.
It is at once both a damning indictment of a safety net so compromised it strangles many of those it catches and a passionate demand for an end to austerity, which hits hardest those most in need.
Desires Reborn
Explicit Stories of Disability, Desire and Love. Opening the long closed door on disabled people’s sex lives.
Dirty Laundry
If you have ADHD - or love somebody who does - Dirty Laundry will change your life, and your relationships.
Dirty Laundry is an unfiltered look into the chaos of real life with ADHD. It will transform your self-hatred into self-acceptance, with simple tips that actually work for your brain. It will also help to educate partners, parents and friends, to help them move from frustration to patience, understanding - and love.
Disability Intimacy
What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person.
Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm.
Disability Visibility
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.
Activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanising collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.
Do Your Own Thing
The best underground arts scene you’ve never heard of—Do Your Own Thing, a project run by learning disability arts organisation Heart n Soul.
Looking at the transformative potential of working to support creative young people make the music and art they want to, this book contributes essential new voices, reflections and considerations to the established ideas of ‘Do It Yourself’ culture.
Feminism is for Everybody
Providing a critical evaluation of the successes and failures of contemporary feminism, bell hooks looks at a wide variety of topics including reproductive rights, sexual violence, race, class and work. hooks encourages us to demand alternatives to patriarchal, racist and homophobic culture and thereby to seek out a different future.
First in the World Somewhere
The true adventures of a scribbler, siren, saucepot and pioneer. An 80s onwards memoir, post Punk and rebellion.
To the outside world, Emily looks like a typical girl, with a normal family, living an ordinary life. But inside, Emily does not feel typical, and the older she gets, the more she realises that she is different.
As she finally discovers when she is 16, Emily is autistic. Girl Unmasked is the extraordinary story of how she got there - and how she very nearly didn't.
Girl Unmasked
Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode
Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode presents us with a series of essays and poems that playfully, artfully propound Jen Calleja’s theory of ‘goblin hood’—a theory that takes in all aspects of pop culture from film, literature and art as well as the author’s personal and original examinations of grief, lust, family histories and the physical fact of living in the world as it is.
Cassie needs a change. She's in a job she hates, dating a guy who couldn't care less about her, and secretly dreaming of making her dance ambitions a reality. But that's all they are, dreams. Because no way could she actually do it . . . right?
But then an opportunity to dance on tour with a global superstar presents itself and Cassie decides to give it a shot. Jetting off for a hot summer in Ibiza, her dreams seem closer than ever, and so does real love. Levi, the guy she keeps bumping into, sees and uplifts her in a way no one else ever has. If only Cassie could believe in herself like he does, she might find that life hits different when you learn to love yourself first . . .
A sizzling summer romance from Love Island star Tasha Ghouri and Lizzie Huxley-Jones.
Hits Different
How to do Life with a Chronic Illness
Like a cozy chat with a best mate, Pippa Stacey shares her years of wisdom to provide a groundbreaking, highly accessible guide to living well with chronic illness.
Ableism and disability history isn't taught in schools so no one knows what it looks and sounds like until it is them on the receiving end- and that isn't limited to the Disabled community either. Whether you know it or not, you have been affected by an ableist system.
Victoria has compiled these examples and how better to navigate them in an effort to helpfully and kindly show what we can do to be better allies- it's a small thing we can all do every day to be more inclusive from language adjustments to how to approach people with Disabilities in a kinder way.
Little Book of Ableism
Living with Hearing Loss & Deafness
An all-you-need-to-know about hearing loss and deafness, including facts, experiences and words of wisdom from experts at the RNID, audiologists, deaf activists and people who use and teach sign language.
Having been on her own deaf journey, Samantha Baines has met wonderful, interesting, courageous people of all ages who also happen to be deaf. Alongside experts, she weaves together insights and advice and, importantly, teaches those of us who aren't deaf, what it is like for those who are.
Pleasure Activism
How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? adrienne maree brown explodes the myth that changing the world is just another form of work.
Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Cara Page, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Together they cover a wide array of subjects-from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs building new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.
Queerly Autistic
In this empowering and honest guide for LGBTQIA+ autistic teens, Erin Ekins gives you all the tools you need to figure out and explore your gender identity and sexuality.
From coming out to friends and family, staying safe in relationships and practicing safe sex, through to self-care and coping with bullying, being out and about in the LGBTQIA+ community and undergoing gender transition, this book is filled with essential information, advice, support and resources to help you on your journey, and also works as a primer on all things LGBTQIA+ for non-autistic teens who are just figuring it all out.
Read This to Get Smarter
An approachable guide to being an informed, compassionate, and socially conscious person today-from discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation to disability, class, and beyond--from critically-acclaimed historian, educator, and author Blair Imani.
We live in a time where it has never been more important to be knowledgeable about a host of social issues, and to be confident and appropriate in how to talk about them. What's the best way to ask someone what their pronouns are? How do you talk about racism with someone who doesn't seem to get it? What is intersectionality, and why do you need to understand it? While it can seem intimidating or overwhelming to learn and talk about such issues, it's never been easier thanks to educator and historian Blair Imani, creator of the viral sensation "Smarter in Seconds" videos.
Centred around two lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a book about masculinity, fatherhood, and love. The speaker, looking backwards to his late father and forwards to his new son, prepares to become a parent for the first time.
Meditating on the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the ‘hypothetical’ and the ‘real’ of becoming a father, this irreversible transition causes the poet’s ‘lines [to] lead towards my father (again!)’.
Signs, Music
Why be a slug? Slugs: A Manifesto explores a creature that survives by being disgusting. Weaving together manifesto, memoir and poetic language, Abi Palmer considers the politics of space, iridescent queerness, and shapeshifting viscous ‘slug time.’ In the face of a potential apocalypse, Slugs: A Manifesto envisions a future where humanity becomes just a little more sluglike.
Slugs: A Manifesto
When ‘ADHD wife’ Rox and neurotypical husband Rich asked their community of 2.5 million what the biggest ADHD struggle is, the thousands of replies changed everything. As they learned, the real enemy isn’t productivity or focus, but the toxic ADHD core beliefs we’ve internalised.
Small Talk
Strong Female Character
I'm diagnosed with autism 20 years after telling a doctor I had it.
My terrible Catholic I hate my parents etc.
My friendship with an elderly man who runs the corner shop and is definitely not trying to groom me. I get groomed.
Homelessness.
Stripping.
More stripping but with more nervous breakdowns.
I hate everyone at uni and live with a psycho etc.
REDACTED as too spicy.
After everyone tells me I don't look autistic, I try to cure my autism and get addicted to Xanax.
REDACTED as too embarrassing.
The Future Is Disabled asks some provocative questions: What if the majority of people will be disabled in the near future - and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom become crucial if we're going to create a future where surviving fascism, climate change, and pandemics and creating liberation are possible?
Building on the work of her game-changing book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Piepzna-Samarasinha writes about disability justice at the end of the world, documenting the many ways disabled people kept and are keeping each other - and the rest of the world alive.
The Future is Disabled
A positive, self-affirming guide for girls with ADHD to increase their self-knowledge and empower them in their daily lives by explaining the strengths and challenges of ADHD. Stuffed with tips, strategies and visuals designed for ADHD learners and self-reflective activities that can be used with support from parents, mentors or teachers.
The Teenage Girl's Guide to Living Well with ADHD
This powerful, honest, hilarious and furious memoir from journalist and advocate Lucy Webster looks at life at the intersection; the struggles, the joys and the unseen realities of being a disabled woman. From navigating the worlds of education and work, dating and friendship; to managing care; contemplating motherhood; and learning to accept your body against a pervasive narrative that it is somehow broken and in need of fixing, The View From Down Here shines a light on what it really means to move through the world as a disabled woman.
The View From Down Here
Ready to spend a quiet Christmas with his nearest and dearest, Christopher has closed up his bakery and found someone to stay in his flat over the festive period. But the mysterious person he's rented his flat to turns out to be Nash Nadeau- the star of all his favourite Christmas movies.
For Nash, this Christmas was a chance to escape Hollywood. But when a huge snowstorm hits, the whole country grinds to a halt. There's no way Christopher is leaving, and there's nowhere else for Nash to stay. The two of them are just going to have to weather this together, snowed in for Christmas...
Under the Mistletoe with You
Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect.
The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the “wandering womb” of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis.
Unwell Women
Welcome to Biscuit Land
Tourettes can be tough to live with, often bringing out unpleasant behaviour in people who don’t understand it, but it can also be inspiring and, above all, funny.
These excerpts from Jess’s personal blog follow a year in her life and the whole spectrum of her experiences. We’re introduced to her support network of close friends, including Fat Sister, Leftwing Idiot and King Russell, as well as strangers who can be unpredictably helpful or hurtful.
Moving, funny, shocking, tender, and inspiring, Jess’s words are courageous and optimistic in the face of the major challenges she faces. Welcome to Biscuit Land.
What the Fuck is Normal?
If you grow up in a world where wrinkles are practically illegal, going bald is cause for a mental breakdown, and women over size zero are encouraged to shoot themselves (immediately), what the hell do you do if you’re, gasp … DISABLED?
Whatever body you’re born into, the pressure to be normal is everywhere. But have you ever met a normal person? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they eat for breakfast?And what the fuck does normal mean anyway?
This funny, personal, and universal story of how Martinez learned to stick two shaky fingers up to the crazy expectations of a world obsessed with being ‘normal’.
In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its beauty and ferocity and symbolises power, bravery, and protection. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong.
A collection of essays, conversations, graphics, photos and art, this is a raw and multifaceted impressionistic collage of an Asian American disability rights activist, community builder, and media maker. From her love of good food and pop culture to speaking out against the often complex and overlooked ways inequities and injustices play out in an ableist society, Alice tells her story and creates a space to hear from other disability activists through enriching conversations.
Year of the Tiger
You are the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread
Sam has way too many nipple hairs. She prefers the company of her pets to people. And repeatedly I question Am She Normal? Renke was born with brittle bone condition and has broken her bones 200 times. But most of the hurdles she faces don’t come from her disability, they come from things we all experience.
In this book, Renke shares the lessons she has learned and why you should embrace your uniqueness as what makes you fabulous. It’s only when you stop living by others’ expectations that you start saying yes to life. Irrespective of who you are and the obstables you might face, you can do whatever you want. Be free and unapologetically you.