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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.
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
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
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
Constellations, Kate Glasheen
The Golden Hour, Niki Smith
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
Perfect World, (Series), Rie Aruga
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
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!