Books by Authors With Various Disabilities:

(September 1999 Update)

Compiled by Barbara Beckwith with help from Emma Morgan, Carrie Dearborn, Mary Jezer, and Sarah Wernick of the National Writers Union

Codeine Diary: True Confessions of a Reckless Hemophiliac, by Tom Andrews
(Little Brown 1998 hardback; Harcourt Brace 1998 paperback).

Andrews is a poet, creative writing teacher, and copy editor for Mathematics Review. After experiencing pain that only codeine could quell, and a long, slow convalescence including grueling physical therapy, Andrews took his wife's advice to "write it all down." Often hilarious, Andrews' memoir transcends its subject and becomes the story of a man's desire to inhabit the world fully no matter what the cost. Portions of this book appeared earlier in Harper's, Field, and in The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle, one of Andrews two books of poetry (the other is titled The Brother's Country). Andrews teaches at Purdue University. His agent is Gordon Kato, and his editors at Little Brown are Geoffrey Kloske and Jordan Pavlin.

Horizontal Woman: The Story of a Body in Exile, by Suzanne E. Berger
(Houghton Mifflin1996).

Memoir of the six years Berger spent "living lying down" after a back injury (from bending down to pick up her child) damaged the connective tissues that allow her to stand upright (hypermobile sacrum). She can now walk around a block and stand for an hour. Her "invisible" disability causes people to misinterpret why she lies down in stores, in theaters, at airports.

Wired for Sound: A Journey into Hearing, by Beverly Biderman
(Trifolium Press, 1998).

Biderman tells the story of her deafness and of her decision to have a cochlear implant, an artificial sensory organ. After 30 years of deafness, she describes her adventure (delightful, terrifying, funny, poignant) into a new world of sound. Includes the voices of a wide range of deaf people talking about their deafness, and a balanced exploration of the explosive issues of the Deaf culture's opposition to cochlear implants. The author lives in Toronto.

Sisters & Lovers, by Connie Briscoe
(Ballantine 1994);
Big Girls Don't Cry, and
A Long Way From Home
(HarperCollins 1999).

Briscoe's first book was a commercial novel about three sisters (a successful magazine editor who would love to be in love; a woman who juggles a thankless job, a child and a husband while she longs to finish her degree; and the sister who seems to have it all -- successful psychology practice and lawyer husband -- but doesn't. A Long Way From Home is an historical novel based on her family ancestors, born as slaves on President James Madison's Montpelier plantation. Briscoe, an African-American, was born with a mild hearing loss but in her late 20's went from 20 to 80 percent hearing loss. Former managing editor for American Annals of the Deaf at Gallaudet University, she now makes a living as a writer. She lives in Washington DC.

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, by John Callahan
(1989 WM Morrow hardback. 1990 Vintage paperback).

The 38-year-old cartoonist, a quadriplegic and recovering alcoholic, tells the story of his life with taboo-shattering humor. Callahan thanks his Morrow editors Liza Dawson and Stacy Shiff and his agent Richard Pines.

Meditations From a Movable Chair, essays by Andre Dubs, who died of a heart attack in February, 1999. He is considered a master of the short story. Dubus is author of fiction collections such as Adultery and Other Choices (1977), We Don't Live Here Anymore (1984), Selected Stories (1988), and Dancing After Hours (1995), plus collections of essays: Broken Vessels (1991) -- a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, and Meditations From a Movable Chair (1998). Dubus was struck by a car in 1986 when he stopped to help a couple whose car had broken down on the side of the highway. One leg was amputated, the other paralyzed.

Bone Truth: A Novel, by Anne Finger
(Coffee House Press 1994).

A disabled activist, facing an unplanned pregnancy, reflects back on her battles with polio and repeated surgeries. Finger has taught art at the San Francisco Independent Learning Center, worked for better health care for the women of Nicaragua, and achieved recognition for her photographs of nude, disabled women.

Body, Remember: A Memoir, by Kenny Fries
(Dutton/Plume 1997).

Fries is a gay writer of poetry, plays and nonfiction. He is author of Night After Night, The Healing Notebooks (Open Books1990), and Anesthesia: Poems (The Avocado Press). Fries was born with a congenital condition affecting the lower extremities of his body. He is editor of the anthology, Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out (Plume 1997). He lives in Northampton, MA and teaches at the MFA in Writing Program at Goddard College in Vermont. He has received a residency at The MacDowell Colony and at Yaddo. In his acknowledgements, he thanks his editor, Carole DeSanti. His agent is Jed Mattes.

The Seeing Glass: A Memoir, by Jacquelin Gorman
(Riverhead hardback 1997, paperback 1998).

The sudden onset of multiple sclerosis leaves the author temporarily blind. Gradually, her sight does

return, though imperfectly. Meanwhile, she allows her blindness to help her recall memories of her autistic brother -- who was sent away to a mental institution at age 12 -- memories that she had dutifully erased many years before.

Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life With Autism,
by Temple Gradin (foreword by Oliver Sacks)
(Doubleday hardback 1995, Vintage paperback 1995).

Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, Gradin tells us how she experiences autism and how she managed to function in the outside world. Gradin has a Ph.D in animal science from the University of Illinois, and has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States, and many in other countries. She is currently an assistant professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University and a frequent lecturer on autism. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. She thanks her editor, Betsy Lerner, and her agent, Pat Breinin.

Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy
(Houghton Mifflin 1994).

Grealy is an award-winning poet. She has attended the Iowa Writers Workshop, was a fellow at the Bunting Institute and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and did residencies at Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. She was born in Ireland, grew up in Rockland County NY, and currently lives in New York City. She teaches writing at the New School. Because of cancer, half her jaw had to be removed in childhood, which gives her face a triangular shape.

Twitch and Shout: A Touretter's Tale, by Lowell Handler
(Dutton 1998; Penguin/Plume 1999).

Lowell Handler is a photojournalist whose work has appeared in Life, Newsweek, U.S. News And World Report and other publications. He was the narrator and associate producer of the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary Twitch and Shout. He lives in New York where he is a faculty member of The New School of Social Research's photography department. His editor at Dutton is Deirdre Mullane and his agent is Andrew Blauner. Handler wrote part of his book at Blue Mountain Center. His writing was first published in In Health.

Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence,
a memoir by John Hockenberry, ABC News correspondent
(Hyperion 1995).

Hockenberry spent more than a decade with National Public Radio as a general assignment reporter, Middle East correspondent, and program host. He describes riding a mule up hillsides in Iraq to cover Kurdish refugees, navigating his wheelchair through Middle Eastern sand, auditioning to be the first journalist in space, and dealing with crip sex and the inaccessibility of NY subways. Hockenberry has been a paraplegic since an auto accident at age nineteen. He lives in New York City.

Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words, by Marty Jezer
(Basic Books 1997).

Jezer is author of Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel (1992), Rachel Carson: Biologist and Author (1998), and The Dark Ages: Life in the United States 1945-1960 (1982). Jezer describes his lifelong struggle to speak fluently, via meditation, speech therapy, psychotherapy, oration, and finally the self-help movement. His memoir goes from childhood to parenthood, and includes how, after a job hunter told him he was unemployable, he created his own career. He is a member of the National Writers Union's Vermont Local and lives in Brattleboro. His agents are Frances Goldin and Sydelle Kramer. He also thanks his editor Juliana Nocker of Basic Books.

Count Us In: Growing Up With Down Syndrome, by Jason Kingsley, Mitchell Levitz, Andy Bricky
(Harvest Books, 1994).

Two young men with Down syndrome celebrate -- with the support and word-processing assistance of their mothers -- their successful coming of age and hard-won independence. The book, written in dialogue form, is drawn from 50 conversations between the two young men over the course of three years. They talk of the usual issues of adolescence: sex, girls, God, death, love, war, independence.

Slack Jaw, by Jim Knipfel
(Putnam/Jeremy P. Tarcher 1999).

A darkly comic memoir in which the author traces his 3-decade descent into blindness caused by a rare genetic disease, retinitis pigmentosis. A columnist and staff writer at The New York Press, Knipfel spares no one -- including himself--in his manic story.

Sight Unseen, by Georgina Kleege
(Yale University 1999).

Legally blind (she has 10% sight) since the age of 11, Kleege describes her own experience with and the world's view of visual impairment. "I hope to turn the reader's gaze outward, to say not only 'Here's what I see' but also 'Here's what you see," to show both what's unique and what's universal,'" says Kleege, a novelist (most recent book: Home for the Summer, 1989), essayist, and translator. Kleege describes the negative social status of the blind, analyzes stereotypes perpetuated by movies, and discusses how blindness has been portrayed in literature. Kleege has taught writing and literature courses at the University of Oklahoma and at Ohio State University. She thanks editors Richard Poirer of Raritan Review, Williard Spiegelman of Southwest Review, and J.D. McClatchy of Yale Review for publishing portions of the book.

Planet of the Blind: A Memoir, by Stephen Kuusisto
(Dial Press1998).

Kuusitso, legally blind since birth, describes the decades of his life in which he tried to pass as a sighted person, and how finally acquiring a seeing eye dog changed his life. Kuusisto is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Fulbright scholar. He currently works for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, one of the country's preeminent guide-dog schools, in Yorktown Heights, NY. Kuusisto, in his acknowledgements, thanks his agent, Irene Skolnick, and his editor, Susan Kamil.

The Invention of George Washington, by Paul K. Longmore
(University Press of Virginia 1999).

Longmore earned his Pd.D at Claremont Graduate School in California. Because of childhood polio, Longmore has no use of his arms, has a severe spinal curvature, and sleeps with a ventilator. He wrote an important edtiorial in Newsweek calling for changes in disability regulations to allow him to collect royalties on books he publishes without losing medical insurance and assistive devices. He was living in Los Angeles (late 1980s info).

Everybody's Different: Understanding and Changing Our Reactions to Disabilities,
by Nancy B. Miller, Catherine C. Sammons
(Paul H. Brookes Pub Co, April 1999).

Authors explore how our reactions to and beliefs about disabilities influence our progress toward an inclusive society and share their innovative approach to become more at east with the concept of disability. Includes specific interaction tips and awareness activities that show how we see differences. Gives practical ways to improve our personal, professional, and community relationships.

Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled, by Nancy Mairs.

Author of Ordinary Time, Remembering the Bone House: An Erotics of Place and Space (Harper and Row 1988), Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer (Beacon, 1994), Plaintext: Deciphering a Woman's Life (U. of Arizona Press 1986), and Carnal Acts (HarperCollins 1990). Mairs is an essayist and teacher. With the progression of her multiple sclerosis, she now uses a wheelchair. In her acknowledgements to Voice Lessons, she thanks her Beacon editor, Andrew Hrycyna. Mairs lives in Tucson, Arizona.

A Nearly Normal Life, by Charles L. Mee
(Little Brown 1995).

The Brooklyn-based playwright and author describes his experience having his legs paralyzed by polio in the 1950s and his life since then. He thanks his editor Bill Phillips and his agent Lois Wallace.

Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, by Ved Mehta
(Overlook Press1998).

Author of 21 books (including fiction, travel, biographies, history, and theology), Mehta writes a memoir of his editor -- William Shawn of the New Yorker. In the process, Mehta tells the equally interesting story of the shaping of his own career. Mehta was born in British India, educated in England and the U.S., and became a writer at the New Yorker at age 25. He has been blind since childhood. He lives in New York City.

A Stillness Built of Motion: Living With Tourette's, by Emma Morgan
(Echolalia Press 1996).

A volume of poetry by the author of Gooseflesh (Clothespin Fever Press 1993). A member of the NWU-Western New England Local and co-Chair of the NWU-National Diversity Committee, Morgan has both a disability (Tourette's Syndrome, a congenital neurological disorder) and a chronic illness (Fibromyalgia). She is a Jewish lesbian and lives in Northampton, MA.

The Me in the Mirror, by Connie Panzarino
(Seal Press 1994).

In this memoir, Panzarino writes of her relationships with family members and her long-time lover Ron Kovic (author of Born on the Fourth of July), her eventual turn to lesbianism, and her years of pioneering work in the disability rights movement. She was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Panzarino lives in the Boston area.

A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing, by Renolds Price
(Plume 1994).

Price, one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished writers, recounts without self-pity his struggle with cancer -- which made him a paraplegic -- with agonizing, intractable pain, with the trials of rehab and with reliance on drugs. Price did recover. Parts of A Whole New Life were published in Harper's, New Republic, Image, and American Scholar.

Still Me, by Christopher Reeves
(Random House 1998).

The actor was thrown from a horse in 1995 at age 37. He broke his neck and is paralyzed and breathes with a ventilator. He writes about his experience and his activism on disability issues. He thanks his editor Harry Evans and his literary agent Dan Strone.

After the Stroke: A Journal, by May Sarton
(W W Norton 1990).

The prolific author (House by the Sea, At Seventy: A Journal) describes her stroke and slow recovery.

Slow Dance: A Story of Stroke, Love, and Disability, by Bonnie Sherr Klein
(PageMill Press 1998/originally published by Knopf Canada).

The award-winning filmmaker ("Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography") was struck in 1987 (she was in her mid-forties) by a stroke. From a "locked-in state" she recovered enough to get around with canes or on Gladys, her motorized scooter. She counsels and speaks about health care, rehabilitation, and disability rights and is Artistic Director of the Millenial Festival of Disability. She was the subject of her own award-winning CBC radio series, Bonnie and Gladys, in which she explored being a person with a disability. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Sherr collaborated with Persimmon Blackbridge in the writing of Slow Dance. Sherr thanks her agent Denise Bukowski and Knopf publisher Louise Dennys "who believed in the book before I'd written a word, supported me with patience and edited with brilliance and tact."

The Body's Memory, by Jean Stewart
(St. Martins, 1989).

Now in its third printing. Stewart uses journal entries, poems, third-person narratives, lyrical inner monologues and letters to tell the story of her becoming disabled from cancer. The Disability Rag called it "The first real novel for a disability rights movement."

Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up From the Story of My Life,
by Joan Tollifson
(Bell Tower, 1996).

Tollifson portrays her struggle against society's labels (she was born without a hand) and cultural biases (she is a lesbian). She finds identity as a bisexual lesbian and a disability rights activist, but also sinks into drug addiction and alcoholism, then embraces Zen Bhuddism, and finally discovers a very bare spirituality that has no form. One person's commitment to self-discovery. One reviewer calls it "lively, ravishingly honest, funny, deeply serious, totally disarming."

Anthologies by Writers with Disabilities:

Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out, edited by Kenny Fries
(Plume 1997).

Nonfiction, poetry, fiction and drama by 38 writers with disabilities, including Andre Dubus, Stanley Elkin, Anne Finger, Lucy Grealy, Marilyn Hacker, John Hockenberry, Ved Mehta, Emma Morgan, Adrienne Rich.

With Wings: An Anthology of Literature by and about Women with Disabilities,
edited by Marsha Saxton and Florence Howe
(The Feminist Press 1987).

Thirty writers, both well-known (Nancy Mairs, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Alice Walker) and previously unpublished, goes beyond cliched inspirational tales to describe the day-to-day reality of disabled women's lives.

What Happened to YOU? Writing By Disabled Women, edited by Lois Keith
(The Women's Press/London 1994; The New Press 1996).

The anthology covers the psychological aspects of each individual woman's experience with disability.

Eyes of Desire: A Deaf Gay And Lesbian Reader, edited by Raymond Luczak
(Alyson Press 1993).

The writers tell about their lives: sexual identity, barriers to communication in a sound-based world, and creating a deaf gay and lesbian culture in a world that is too often afraid of differences. Luczak lives in New York City. His writing has appeared in Men on Men, Christopher Street, and other publications.

Pushing the Limits: Disabled Dykes Produce Culture,
edited by Shelley Tremain
(Women's Press, October 96).

Poetry and autobiographical works about sexuality, disability, and the interactions between the two. One reviewer wrote: "A must read for people investigating experiences about ability, womanhood, queer sexuality, women of color, classism, family."

With the Power of Each Breath: A Disabled Women's Anthology,
edited by Susan E. Browne, Debra Connors and Nanci Stern.
(Cleis Press 1985).

The anthology's 45 contributors include Maureen Brady and Ann Finger. Highly political, personal, and unromanticized, the pieces in this book cover the economic, psychological, and physical aspects of the contributors' experience.

A Selection of Practical Guides:

One-Handed in Two-Handed World, by Tommye K. Mayer
(Prince-Gallison Press 1996).

A member of the National Writers Union, Mayer self-published her step-by-step guide to managing "just about everything" with the use of one hand. This how-to book is based on her experience coping with everyday life after her stroke at age 21. The book includes illustrations. Mayer lives in Boston, MA.

A Guide for People Who Become Deaf or Severely Hard of Hearing: A Late-Deafened Consumer's Perspective,
by Karen Rockow
(Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing 1997).

Stroke, by Margaret Robison
(Deerfield River Press 1996).

Her pre-stroke poetry books include The Naked Bear, Red Creek, and Here. Prior to her stroke, she served as a poet-in-residence in Massachusetts elementary schools. She lives in Shelburne Falls (MA) and now leads writing workshops for women with disabilities and for people in nursing homes and senior centers. She has no use of her left arm or hand, has difficulty speaking, and uses a wheelchair.

Living Well With a Hidden Disability: Transcending Doubt and Shame and Reclaiming Your Life,
by Stacy Taylor, Robert Epstein
(New Harbinger Publications, May 1999).

The author is disabled by chronic illness and offers strategies to those who appear able-bodied but who are disabled by chronic health problems such as lupus, fibromyaligia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, inner ear problems, etc.

The Fibromyalgia Relief Book: 213 Ideas for Improving Your Quality of Life,
by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
(Walker and Co. 1998) .

The author is a National Writers Union member and author of Fibromyalgia: A Comprehensive Approach.

Books Scheduled For Publication in Fall 1999:

Restricted Access: Lesbians on Disability, edited by Victoria A. Brownworth and Susan Raffo
(Seal Press/Publishers Group West, October 1999).

Nonfiction anthology looks at how Americans deal with difference, by looking at the intersection of sexuality and disability. Writers represent a range of disabilities (chronic fatigue syndrome, manic depression, cerebral palsy) as well as a variety of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds.

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, by Eli Clare
(South End Press, October 1999 paperback original).

The author, a lesbian with cerebral palsy, examines environmentalism, disability and gender.

Points of Contact: Disability, Art and Culture,
edited by Susan Crutchfield, Marcy Epstein
(University of Michigan Press, Aug 1999).

Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography, and Being Female in America,
by Gelya Frank
(Univ California Press Dec 1999).

Books By Non-Disabled Writers:

Life as We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child,
by Michael Berube
(Vintage 1998).

When Jamie Berube was born with Down syndrome in 1991, he was immediately subjected to medical procedures, representations, insurance guidelines and policies that surround every child our society designates as disabled. Berube describes not only the challenges of raising his son but the challenge of seeing him as a person rather than as a medical, genetic or social problem. Berube teaches English at University of Illinois.

A Difference in the Family, by Helen Featherstone
(Viking 1981).

Shows how families cope with the responsibilities of a disabled child. Gives first-hand accounts of people who have various relationships with a disabled person, including those with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities.

Train Go Sorry, by Leah Hager Cohen
(Houghton Mifflin 1994).

Memoir about growing up among deaf people. Cohen is bi-lingual (ASL/ENGLISH) and a native signer. Her book deals with the controversy over mainstreaming and the use of cochlear implants vs. the right to choose to be culturally Deaf. The title is an exact translation from American Sign Language; it basically means, "Sorry, the train has already left." When her book was published, Cohen lived in Somerville, MA.

No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement,
By Joseph P. Shapiro
(Times Books , 1990).

Shapiro traces the history of the disability rights movement by identifying individual strands that eventually came together: the 1988 deaf students' protests demanding that a deaf president be installed at Gallaudet University; People First; the development by users of lightweight wheelchairs; Berkeley's evolution to "a mecca for the handicapped." Inspirational in the same way as all stories of progressive social movements.

Why Can't Sharon Kowalski Come Home? by Karen Thompson
(Spinsters/Aunt Lute 1988).

Kowalski was profoundly disabled when a drunk driver struck her car, leaving her unable to move or communicate. Thompson, her life partner (their relationship had been deeply closeted) and a physical therapist, helped Thompson with early rehab and communicating via a letter board. Kowalski's parents won a years-long custody battle and ousted Thompson from their daughter's life, denying that their daughter had been lesbian. They eventually put Sharon into a nursing home. Thompson, an Assistant Professor of Physical Education and Recreation and Adjunct Professor of Human Relations at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, became both "out" and outspoken: she won many awards for her justice work on behalf of disabled people and same-gender couples.

An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, by Oliver W. Sacks
(Vintage 1996).

Neurologist Sacks shows how people adapt to neurological conditions such as color blindness, Tourette's syndrome, seizures, autism, etc.; including a blind man given the ambiguous gift of sight, and a painter who loses color vision but finds new creative power in black and white. Sacks gives readers an appreciation of the adaptability and power of human beings when confronted with diversity. He is author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales.

Books Written for Academics or Human Service Providers:

Psychosocial Aspects of Chronic Illness and Disability Among African Americans,
by Faye Z. Belgrave
(Auburn House 1998).

Looks at the prevalence of disabilities and chronic illness among African Americans and explores cultural factors and factors that contribute to successful outcomes. Belgrave is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life-Writing
(Wisconsin Studies in American Autobiography), by G. Thomas Couser
(University of Wisconsin Press 1997).

Couser, a professor of English at Hofstra University, analyzes personal narratives by people with HIV-AIDS, breast cancer, paralysis, and deafness. He considers why and under what circumstances people choose to write about illness or disability, what role does plot play in such narratives? How is closure achieved? Couser is also author of Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography.

Defects: Engendering The Modern Body (Corporealities, Discourses of Disability),
edited by Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum
(U. Michigan Press, November 1999).

Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard, by Nora Ellen Groce, John W.M. Whiting (Harvard University Press, pb reprint 1998). Describes how the hearing residents of a Massachusetts town where a high proportion of the townspeople were deaf learned sign language. When later interviewed by Groce, the residents could not always remember who was deaf and who was not, since everyone communicated easily with each other.

Disability: A Diversity Model Approach in Human Service Practice,
by Romel Mackelprang and Richard Salsgiver
(Brooks/Cole 1999).

The book covers societal and professional stereotypes, disability culture, disability history in the U.S., life stage development, and particular chapters on persons with mobility disabilities, deaf and hard-of-hearing people, persons with visual disabilities and blindness, persons with developmental disabilities, persons with psychiatric disabilities, persons with cognitive disabilities. A third section deals with assessment in human service practice, models of professional practice, and guidelines for practice with persons with disabilities.

Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice, by Michael Oliver
(St. Martin's Press 1996).

Chapters include 1. From Personal Struggle to Political Understanding, 2. Fundamental Principles of Disability, 3. The Social Model in Context, 4. Citizenship, Welfare and Community Care, 5. Social Police and Welfare: From Needs to Rights, 6. Education For All? A Perspective on an Inclusive Society, 7. Rehabilitating Society, 8. The World of Disability, 9. Understanding the Hegemony of Disability, 10. Disability, Politics, and Citizenship, 11. Intellectuals and the Disability Movement.

Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract, by Marta Russell
(Common Courage Press 1998).

Russell has written a "devastating analysis" of the "reform" of the social safety net, according to reviewers. Andrew Cockburn calls the book "vividly written...goes to the heart of many matters, starting with the profound desire of 'normal' people, many of them supposedly broad-minded types squarely within the liberal tradition, to reach for the sterilizing knife, or the medicine cabinet of Dr. Kevorkian when confronted with an affront to their sense of the 'normal.'" Russell is a writer/producer whose investigative reporting earned her the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California's 1994 Golden Mike Award for the best documentary. Disabled from birth, Russell began writing when her disability progressed and she had to navigate the disability policy netherworld to survive. She has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, Z Magazine, and San Diego Union Tribune. She lives in Los Angeles and has a 17-year-old daughter.

To suggest a book to add to this booklist, email Barbara Beckwith at beckwithb@aol.com.

Many of the books on this list can be found at

Magazines that focus on work by writers with disabilities:

New Mobility
P.O. Box 491861
Los Angeles CA 90049
(new address as of 1999)

Hikane: The Capable Woman
PO Box 841
Great Barrington MA 01230

Kaleidsoscope
International Magazine of Literature, Fine Arts, and Disability
701 South Main St.
Akron OH 44311-1019
330-762-9755
330-379-3349 TDD