To paraphrase Jane Austen - if I felt less, I could probably talk about it more.
This book is such a gift and the way that Piepzna-Samarasinha talks about community and the neverending beautiful hard and so often unrewarded and undermined work of building it is amazing.
They don't shy away from the complexity and they refuse to be childish in their estimation of what it takes to bring about a better world.
I loved being invited into their stories. I appreciated the challenges and the kinds of conversations that can only happen in and within communities rather than as performances for outsiders.
How can we move towards horizontal leadership, how can we think about community and systemic and individuals all at once, how can we make sure there is always space for the realities of disabled life?
It's hard to read this book now, four years into a global pandemic that began two years after the book was published, and wonder where we go now. But Piepzna-Samarasinha offers not a map, but a compass, with the hope and the promise that we all can find our ways.