Reviews by yourbookishbff | The StoryGraph

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yourbookishbff

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

Disability Visibility is an anthology of essays edited by disability justice advocate Alice Wong. I don’t think I’ve ever read a collection of stories and perspectives so intersectional, raw and (as a non-disabled person) necessary. The structure of the collection is itself a stunning example of “disabled praxis,” as defined by A.H. Reaume in their essay “Why My Novel is Dedicated to My Disabled Friend Maddy,” as each essay simultaneously adds to and stands apart from preceding narratives, building a collage of experience that reflects the community built by and for those seeking disability justice.

Loosely framed as essays, these range from first-person narratives to transcribed Ted talks to eulogies to artist manifestos to poetry. Several of these stories reflect the trauma and abuse experienced by those living at complex intersections of marginalization, and I was thankful that every essay includes detailed content and trigger warnings at the start. Through this unvarnished truth-telling, the intention of the anthology is made crystal clear - this is a collection rightfully built to amplify disabled voices for the benefit of disabled people and not for the gaze or comfort of non-disabled people.

I read this slowly, over more than a month, and I’m grateful I took my time with it. It challenged me to think about my own areas of deep-seated privilege and about the systems and spaces I have made inaccessible because of this privilege. It expanded my understanding of and respect for inclusivity and helped me to see the ways in which disability rights work has been consistently constrained by non-disabled people. These stories force us to ask, as s.e. smith does in their essay “The Beauty of Spaces Created for and by Disabled People:” “How can we cultivate spaces where everyone has that soaring sense of inclusion, where we can have difficult and meaningful conversations?”

Content Warnings