Reading List: Disability Pride Month

As part of our calendar celebrating national heritage months and observances, explore these selected works that speak to disabled experiences.

A photograph of a mural depicting Frida Kahlo, a disabled Mexican artist. Kahlo's head and shoulders are rendered in black and white in a realistic style, and colorful flowers have been painted on her hair and shoulders.

 

  • Alex Foster’s “A Photon Takes the Shortest Path” tells the story of a space-obsessed girl with FAS and the complicated relationship she has with her young mother.
  • In Haitao Xu’s middle-grade novel, “Cattail,” a young girl is born with a congenital disability and must adapt to the changes in her life and family when her new sister is born as “a perfect baby.”
  • Ed Yong’s essay, “Fatigue Can Shatter a Person,” examines the symptoms of long COVID, ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), and other energy-limiting chronic diseases and the stigma surrounding them in western culture.
  • In “Making Space for the Common Cyborg: an Interview with Jillian Weise” T.K. Dalton and Jillian Weise discuss disability, literature, and place, in a wide-ranging discussion that touches on Weise’s essay contribution to Beauty is a Verb, a landmark anthology of contemporary disability literature as well as the utility of a fictional persona. 
  • In “It Requires a Kind of Surrender: An Interview with Ananda Lima,” Tyler Barton and Ananda Lima discuss Lima’s work and her chapbook Amblyopia, which explores photography, disability, motherhood, and the ineffability of language; Lima’s Issue 20 poem, “Amblyopia,” captivatingly reflects on vision, ability, and language.

 

Image courtesy of Pexels user Brett Sayles.

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Reading List: Disability Pride Month