Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong

“Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world.” 

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong

“Activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers. There are blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, and testimonies to Congress. Taken together, this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love.” 

The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

“Written over the course of two years of disabled isolation during the pandemic, this is a book of love letters to other disabled QTBIPOC (and those concerned about disability justice, the care crisis, and surviving the apocalypse); honor songs for kin who are gone; recipes for survival; questions and real talk about care, organizing, disabled families, and kin networks and communities; and wild brown disabled femme joy in the face of death. With passion and power, The Future Is Disabled remembers our dead and insists on our future.”

• This title is available as eBook or eAudiobook on Libby & Hoopla

True Biz by Sara Novic

“This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they’ll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both at the same time. This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, cochlear implants and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy.”

Out on a Limb by Hannah Bonam-Young

“Winnifred “Win” McNulty has always been wildly independent and not one to be coddled for her limb difference. Win has spent most of her life trying to prove that she can do it all on her own. Then a one-night stand at a costume party with the incredibly charming Bo changes everything. Win finds herself pregnant–and decides to keep it. While Bo is surprisingly elated to step up to the plate, Win is unsure of whether she can handle this new challenge. Together, Win and Bo decide to get to know one another as friends and nothing more while they embark on this parenting journey together. But, as they both should know by now, life rarely goes according to plan.” 

Upward Bound by Woody Brown

“Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles’s disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. Framing these intertwined narratives–and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways–is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.” 

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

“Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey–one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.”