Mr. Lincoln From Fifty Shades Of Grey?

Follow My Leader by James B Garfield is a book from my childhood I am very fond of. It's for ages 8 - 12. I haven't reread it as an adult so I don't know how it stands up.

It is about a boy who goes blind when he is playing with fire crackers with his friends. It follows him from his injury, to going through life skills camp, to getting a guide dog, and eventually dealing with a bully.

It was first published in 1957, 33 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed into law. "The Braille Technology Timeline" doesn't start until 1971.

Despite this, I find myself thinking that if every child had read this book growing up there would be a lot (edit: LESS, forgot LESS) of internet bullshit along the lines of, “buT hOw Do yOU uSe a cEll pHonE iF yOu’Re bLinD”.

There have always been allies who care about people with disabilities, and, alongside them, have worked to improve access and accommodations as society presses forward. Blind people do not live cruel and unfulfilling lives trapped at home and deprived of the world and technology. The attitude that they do comes from a failure to see the support systems, including friends and family, which have been present from the beginning.

And that's my justification for continuing to deeply love and strongly recommend this book from 66 years ago.

The Disability Library

I love books, I love literature, and I love this blog, but it's only been recently that I've really been given the option to explore disabled literature, and I hate that. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be able to read about characters like me, and now as an adult, all I want is to be able to read a book that takes us seriously.

And so, friends, Romans, countrymen, I present, a special disability and chronic illness booklist, compiled by myself and through the contributions of wonderful members from this site!

As always, if there are any at all that you want me to add, please just say. I'm always looking for more!

Updated: 12/08/2023

Articles

The Drifting Language of Architectural Accessibility in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Essaka Joshua, 2012

Early Modern Literature and Disability Studies, Allison P. Hobgood, David Houston Wood, 2017

Making Do with What You Don't Have: Disabled Black Motherhood in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Anna Hinton, 2018

Necropolitics, Achille Mbeme, 2003 OR Necropolitics, Achille Mbeme, 2019

Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts, Zygmunt Bauman, 2004

Witchcraft and deformity in early modern English Literature, Scott Eaton, 2020

Books

Fiction:

10 Things I Can See From Here, Carrie Mac

Akata Witch, (Series), Nnedi Okorafor

A Mango-Shaped Hole, Wendy Mass

An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon

A Shot in the Dark, Victoria Lee

A Snicker of Magic, Natalie Lloyd

A Song of Ice and Fire, (series), George R. R. Martin

A Time to Dance, Padma Venkatraman

Bath Haus, P. J. Vernon

Beasts of Prey, (Series), Ayana Gray

Black Bird, Blue Road, Sofiya Pasternack

Cafe con Lychee, Emery Lee

Cinder, (Series), Marissa Meyer

Clean, Amy Reed

Connection Error, (Series), Annabeth Albert

Crazy, Benjamin Lebert

Crooked Kingdom, (Series), Leigh Bardugo

Dear Fang, With Love, Rufi Thorpe

The Degenerates, J. Albert Mann

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Emily R. Austin

The Extraordinaries, (Series), T. J. Klune

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, (Series), Trenton Lee Stewart

The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix

Forever Is Now, Mariama J. Lockington

Fortune Favours the Dead, (Series), Stephen Spotswood

Fresh, Margot Wood

Harmony, London Price

Highly Illogical Behaviour, John Corey Whaley

Honey Girl, Morgan Rogers

How to Become a Planet, Nicole Melleby

I Am Not Alone, Francisco X. Stork

The Immeasurable Depth of You, Maria Ingrande Mora

In the Ring, Sierra Isley

Iron Widow, (Series), Xiran Jay Zhao

Izzy at the End of the World, K. A. Reynolds

Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, (short story) (anthology), Seiko Tanabe

Just by Looking at Him, Ryan O'Connell

Lakelore, Anna-Marie McLemore

Learning Curves, (Series), Ceillie Simkiss

Let's Call It a Doomsday, Katie Henry

The Library of the Dead, (Series), TL Huchu

Long Macchiatos and Monsters, Alison Evans

Love from A to Z, (Series), S.K. Ali

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

The No-Girlfriend Rule, Christen Randall

Noor, Nnedi Okorafor

One For All, Lillie Lainoff

On the Edge of Gone, Corinne Duyvis

Out of My Mind, Sharon M. Draper

Parable of the Sower, (Series), Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Talents, (Series), Octavia E. Butler

Percy Jackson & the Olympians, (series), Rick Riordan

Pomegranate, Helen Elaine Lee

The Pursuit Of..., (Series), Courtney Milan

The Quiet and the Loud, Helena Fox

Roll with It, (Series), Jamie Sumner

Russian Doll, (Series), Cristelle Comby

Scar of the Bamboo Leaf, Sieni A.M

Six of Crows, (Series) Leigh Bardugo

Sizzle Reel, Carlyn Greenwald

The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal

The Stagsblood Prince, (Series), Gideon E. Wood

Stars in Your Eyes, Kacen Callender [Expected release: Oct 2023]

The Storm Runner, (Series), J. C. Cervantes

The Theft of Sunlight, (Series), Intisar Khanani

Throwaway Girls, Andrea Contos

Top Ten, Katie Cotugno

Torch, Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Treasure, Rebekah Weatherspoon

Verona Comics, Jennifer Dugan

We Are the Ants, (Series), Shaun David Hutchinson

The Weight of Our Sky, Hanna Alkaf

The Whispering Dark, Kelly Andrew

Wicked Sweet, Chelsea M. Cameron

Wonder, (Series), R. J. Palacio

Wrong to Need You, (Series), Alisha Rai

Ziggy, Stardust and Me, James Brandon

Graphic Novels:

Constellations, Kate Glasheen

The Golden Hour, Niki Smith

Magazines: Anthologies and Articles:

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #175: Grandmother-nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds, (Article), R. B. Lemburg

Uncanny #24: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, (Anthology), edited by: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Dominik Parisien et al.

Uncanny #30: Disabled People Destroy Fantasy, (Anthology), edited by: Nicolette Barischoff, Lisa M. Bradley, Katharine Duckett

Manga:

Perfect World, (Series), Rie Aruga

Non-Fiction:

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education, Jay Timothy Dolmage

A Disability History of the United States, Kim E, Nielsen

The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access, David Gissen

Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism, Elsa Sjunneson

Black Disability Politics, Sami Schalk

Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Eli Clare

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability, Barker, Clare and Stuart Murray, editors.

The Capacity Contract: Intellectual Disability and the Question of Citizenship, Stacy Clifford Simplican

Capitalism and Disability, Martha Russel

Care work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Catatonia, Shutdown and Breakdown in Autism: A Psycho-Ecological Approach, Dr Amitta Shah

The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, Esme Weijun Wang

Crip Kinship, Shayda Kafai

Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook, Jules Sherred

Culture – Theory – Disability: Encounters between Disability Studies and Cultural Studies, Anne Waldschmidt, Hanjo Berressem, Moritz Ingwersen

Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition, Liat Ben-Moshe

Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, Emily Ladau

Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post-ADA World, Ben Mattlin

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-First Century, Alice Wong

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space, Amanda Leduc

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, Eli Clare

Feminist Queer Crip, Alison Kafer

The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

It's Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability, Kelly Davio

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

Language Deprivation & Deaf Mental Health, Neil S. Glickman, Wyatte C. Hall

The Minority body: A Theory of Disability, Elizabeth Barnes

My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World That Is Sick, Lyndsey Medford

No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s, Sarah F. Rose

Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment, James I. Charlton

The Pedagogy of Pathologization Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus, Subini Ancy Annamma

Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature, Essaka Joshua

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, Raymond Luczak, Editor.

The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability, Jasbir K. Puar

Sitting Pretty, (memoir), Rebecca Taussig

Sounds Like Home: Growing Up Black & Deaf in the South, Mary Herring Wright

Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness: How to Stay Sane and Live One Step Ahead of Your Symptoms, Ilana Jacqueline

The Things We Don't Say: An Anthology of Chronic Illness Truths, Julie Morgenlender

Unmasking Autism, Devon Price

The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe, Ellen Clifford

Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life, (memoir) (essays) Alice Wong

Picture Books:

Small Knight and the Anxiety Monster, Manka Kasha

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With an extra special thank you to @parafoxicalk @craftybookworms @lunod @galaxyaroace @shub-s @trans-axolotl @suspicious-whumping-egg @ya-world-challenge @fictionalgirlsworld @rubyjewelqueen @some-weird-queer-writer @jacensolodjo @cherry-sys @dralthon for your absolutely fantastic contributions!

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I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS 9TH GRADE. THAT’S NEARLY 10 YEARS AGO. MY CHEST IS SCREAMING

AHHHHHH

Rebecca Lindenberg | Interview in The Believer | March 27 2012 

Autistic Joke

Knock knock. Who’s there? Echolalia. Echolalia who? Knock knock. Who’s there? Echolalia. Echolalia who? Knock knock. Who’s there? Echolalia. Echolalia who? Knock knock.

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The first time I ever got drunk I pulled up the last scene of Twelfth Night on my phone and passionately recited it, voicing all the characters. And apparently this was totally unprompted. There was a lull in the conversation and I just went for it.

I used to have the entirety of Queen Mab memorized but I’m still salty over being harshly graded for that school project and because

“And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly, / To do you rest a thousand deaths would die.”

“Where goes Cesario? / After him I love / More than I love these eyes, more than my life, / More by all mores than e’er I shall love wife“

Is the sexist SEXY-EST thing in all of Shakespeare.

Um no offense but why doesn’t anyone memorize passages from books and then recite them aloud for everyone at parties anymore.

I made some fanart for our loving wolf moms.

Two female Arctic wolves nursing pups together. As a behaviour it’s very rare and it’s the first time it has ever been filmed. [x] 

i want to hold my tongue and not share the depth of my opinions about the two-headed cow but it upsets me so much every time i see it, i really do hate the narrative of 'rooting for' an animal like this to live despite it being unable (and will be unable, for its entire life) to do the most basic of things life has to offer, even breathing, eating, moving, to prioritize the savior myth that everything can and should be saved, that every living creature should be treated this way as though its not one of the greatest mercies that we as humans have the ability to enact a quick and painless alternative to a slow and miserable life that ends in slow and miserable death on our livestock when they can't advocate for themselves, the ability we have as humans to see the research and make a prognosis and decide that the spectacle is not worth the extended misery, but this life is worth the dignity of a peaceful death we have the capacity to grant

because there is a difference between helping a baby animal in the first legs of life knowing it has a chance to have a quality of life worth fighting for, not a life doomed to be painful that we KNOW is painful knowing all that we know about animals who come with this specific type of physical abnormality, what we see on the surface is only a fraction of much more malformation and deterioration on the inside that we can't just decide is not happening because they 'look' fine, and what we see on the surface is already a life from start to finish without any experience an animal like this should have by virtue of being alive, with no life at all and no understanding of why it is going through this

the assumption that there is no suffering despite eating, breathing, moving never something that this baby will be able to do unassisted, despite knowing the longest a two-headed cow has ever survived was not even a year and a half and that record hasn't been broken in over thirty years, that's not even a quarter, an 8th, a 12th, a 15th of a cow's normal lifespan, and doubtfully much of that was pleasant or comfortable, and even if this cow does get to the point of being able to stand on its own, we can't ever know the full range of agony this animal is going through, all we know is there is and there will be agony, and we need to not see life as inherently successful or painless just because something is going in one end and coming out the other, that isn't what defines an animal's quality of life to me

the two-headed calf poem is beautiful to me because it's a miracle that something so rare (luckily) and so doomed could see one extraordinary thing before passing. the sky ceases to be beautiful when forced to live every day for the sake of social media's voyeurism, it makes me so sad that someone who raises livestock would put public attention over their duty to their animals ☹️

I'm on the East Coast, went to sleep at 9 pm, hoping to sleep through the night. Nope, nightmare and awake at 11:00 pm.

People are freaking out based on these early results and I just can't with that shit tonight. We know how it goes - Republicans look like they're doing well early on, then as more votes are counted and more polls close there's the shift. And yet every time we lose our minds.

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Oh I'm going to be seeing this show later this month!

therapist: cunt dracula is not real and cannot fuck you.

cunt dracula:

My Gender: I’m going to dissect, stab, and pate de verre my uterus when I finally get a hysterectomy.

This podcaster’s tried Meta’s version of this

https://www.relay.fm/cortex/140

And it actually wasn’t a disaster.

My favorite part of the very dumb "Apple Vision Pro" ad is this little scene:

Because, if we take this seriously for a moment, let's imagine what would actually be happening in the scene. The two woman are clearly supposed to be in a video call, dancing with each other from far away. Sweet!

Except, the woman in blue isn't wearing a headset. She is clearly using a laptop or a phone or some other camera, which is why we, and the woman in orange, can see her body and face.

So what would this scene look like from the woman in blue's perspective? Well, if the headset is a single product, the camera must be on or inside the headset so, at best, this is what she sees:

Yeah, this technology will really improve video calls! I can't wait!