Memoirs of Disability That Expand the Story Beyond Overcoming

Taussig sometimes drives by a new destination before an appointment to see how she’ll get in. That extra trip changes the scale of the accessibility chapter: even a routine outing can require advance work somebody else never has to think about. The book pays the same kind of attention to dating, teaching, and the ordinary business of making plans.

At college, Girma asks the cafeteria to email its menu so she can read it in Braille and choose what to eat. The staff agree, but the emails arrive sporadically. A simple request turns into a story about who gets to decide what counts as good service and how often a student has to ask for the same thing.

One winter day, Grue’s classmates form a chain behind his wheelchair on the ice. Years later, his young son climbs onto his lap. Put those scenes alongside each other and the different kinds of company they offer become clearer. B.L. Crook translated the memoir from Norwegian.

Lehrer remembers looking at fellow members of an arts collective in Chicago and seeing faces she wanted to paint with the care she admired in Renaissance portraits. Getting the work seen was another matter when galleries were up steep warehouse stairs. Those two details help explain why her illustrated memoir spends time on both who gets painted and who can enter the room.

When Wong can no longer eat some of her favorite foods, she writes about how much she misses them. She also describes making room for flavors she loves, and Felicia Liang illustrates some of her favorites. The food pages belong beside the activism in this collage memoir because they show what care makes room for in an ordinary day.

In Rome’s Galleria Borghese, a stranger’s attention becomes part of what Jones experiences in front of a Bernini sculpture. She keeps track of the art, of being looked at, and of how difficult it is to give either her full attention. The scene is a good way into a memoir that applies the same scrutiny to museums and everyday encounters.

Brown and her identical twin Leah grow up hearing a label that singles one sister out as pretty. Brown gives that label a history, then makes room for her own pleasure in clothes, lipstick, pop culture, and the people who know her well. The essays are especially good on how sisters can be close and hear the same remark very differently.

Leland carries a folded white cane but rarely takes it out. After moving to Massachusetts, he begins using it in public and finds that people respond to him differently even though his sight has changed gradually. That moment opens up his question about how you come to think of yourself as blind and what other people bring to that change.

DiMarco opens with a doctor who tries to soften the news that the newborn twins are Deaf. Their mother wants a straight answer and greets it with two thumbs up. The scene establishes the family history and the pride in American Sign Language that run through the memoir, written with Robert Siebert.

Heumann passes the written and oral exams for a New York City teaching license, then the school system turns her down because she uses a wheelchair. She takes the decision to court and gets her license after the case settles. The memoir, written with Kristen Joiner, makes the personal stakes of a rule about who gets to teach easy to grasp.

A friend brings a woodland snail to Bailey while illness keeps her in bed. When holes appear in an envelope beside the violet pot, Bailey starts paying attention to what her small visitor eats and when it emerges. The book follows her curiosity closely enough that the snail gets to have a life of its own on the page.

Miller imagines working her way up to an editor’s job by thirty, a future she has been planning since long before she gets seriously ill. Then she has to figure out what work and relationships look like with a chronic condition. She brings a reporter’s eye to the practical details, including what it costs to worry about keeping health insurance.

In art class, Henley studies the way proportions are used to judge faces. A few weeks later, she finds a French magazine article comparing her and her identical twin to Picasso’s paintings. The memoir lets the sisters’ experience carry more weight than the language other people use to describe them.

A book Gadsby made at seven comes back to them decades later, with its red cardboard cover and a title that ran out of room. It sends them back to the confusion and hurt that first made them want to tell a story. That small opening is worth keeping in mind as the memoir follows how Gadsby comes to understand their autism and builds a career onstage.

When Bell’s teacher leaves her microphone on, Cece can hear her walking around the school, even in the bathroom. Bell draws that moment from her childhood as both a good joke and a private revelation. The graphic memoir is equally interested in the negotiation that follows when a kid wants a friend who understands how she hears.

Piepzna-Samarasinha arrives in Canada with two backpacks and finds queer South Asian dance nights and new friendships alongside the ordeal of immigration paperwork. The memoir follows a disabled queer writer making a home with other people. It’s a good starting point if you want to read about community as something people build in particular rooms under particular pressures.