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Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'
Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau
1 review
novella42's review
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I bought and loved Demystifying Disability as I started a new job in disability access work at a university. It helped me to feel seen, to better witness others with disabilities different than mine, and to improve my outreach and PR work communicating about disability. I recommended it to all my coworkers as a tool to help fill in our gaps and stay up to date with a diverse collection of perspectives.
I'm grateful that it's short and approachable enough that busy, stressed people can still page through it as a reference and come away with valuable, actionable knowledge. Ladau also included a section with books, films, online videos, and hashtags to follow if you learn better in other formats. (A great example of universal design in education!)
I learned quite a lot of things from this book. For context, I'm a two-time Paralympian and my years of community with international adaptive sports led me to assume I knew more about this topic than the average person. That might be true, but I also have big gaps in my knowledge that came from being born with an orthopedic disability that meant I grew up in a wheelchair. These days, I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user, and sometimes go out on crutches instead. People have assumed for a long time that I'm an expert on disability, but a childhood in a wheelchair framed my understanding of disability as something you could see, some tangible and obvious difference.
Because of that, I have absolutely done ableist things like accuse people of faking their need for an accessible parking spot because I couldn't see a disability. It wasn't until a brave friend pointed out her own invisible disability that I stopped doing that. Eventually I had personal experience with invisible acquired disabilities (like migraines, C-PTSD, and depression) and understood on a deeper level the harm I had done.
Few of my own specific experiences prepared me to join the wider disability community the way Ladau's book prepared me. I went into my first Paralympic Games at age 19 with no clue how to be an ally to people with visual disabilities, or how best to talk to someone with stutters or slurred speech. (I'm reminded of the time that certain athletes with Cerebral Palsy had gone sightseeing and come back to the Athlete's Village inebriated. Your secret is safe with me!) We learned as we went, messy and chaotic, trying to find the energy to educate each other—not to mention coaches, staff, and volunteers—and learn from our mistakes at a time when the word "ableist" didn't even exist yet. (Ableism itself is timeless and has been a force my whole life, long before I had language to talk about it, or understand how I was capable of ableism too.) It would have been a huge relief to have a book like this to help guide me through it.
This book isn't perfect. I disagree on a couple of items that are a matter of opinion, and I wish she'd had the space to go more in depth on some topics, or cover them at all (like how many Deaf people don't consider themselves disabled, and have more in common with cultures and communities that face linguistic barriers). But I understand brevity is crucially important in a resource like this. And our different outlooks are more evidence that disability is not a monolith! It's possibly the most diverse marginalized identity of all, because anyone from any background can become disabled at any moment. Of course we're going to have different outlooks on some things.
How I wish I could send Demystifying Disability back in time to my teenage self. I might have made different choices, said different things. And felt less broken. Less alone.
It's amazing how isolating it can feel to have a disablility, especially since, according to the CDC, 26% (one in 4) of adults in the United States have some type of disability. Those numbers come from 2018, prior to the mass-disabling event of the pandemic.
Whether or not you are one of the 61 million adults in America with a disability, or you know folks with disabilities in your circles, or you want to be a better ally, this book will give you more insight and better words to approach the topic.
Maybe you're here because you've hired a disabled employee and want to make sure your office is accessible and your team knows how to be welcoming. This is a great way to get started.
Maybe you're here because you recently became disabled and you're overwhelmed by all the work it takes to be disabled. Maybe you just want some hashtags to follow so you can find your people. Maybe you don't know how to deal with the way everyone either pretends nothing has changed or assumes you're now an expert. This book might be the lighthouse that will help you get your bearings.
Maybe you're here because you just want to flirt with that hot disabled person you met and ask them out for coffee with less anxiety. This book will totally help you feel more confident doing that. Honestly I can think of numerous people I wish had read it before sliding into my DMs. It's not a guidebook for dating and disability (try the short, funny comic book A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability by A. Andrews). But read this book and you'll have more to talk about with less stress. Seriously, if an able-bodied person quoted Alice Wong or Imani Barbarin to me on a date, I would swoon on the spot. If nothing else, reading a book like this may help you connect more easily because they can spend less energy on educating you and more on the flirting. Win-win, if you ask me!
Maybe you're here searching for a book to reduce the mental and emotional labor of educating your friends, family, coworkers, partners, or dates. It's exhausting, right? And demoralizing when someone says that you talk too much about disability. (It's almost as if it affects all parts of our lives!) Save your spoons and send them this book. It will help. And it will still be worthwhile for you to read it, too. Trust me.
Demystifying Disability will answer questions you didn't even know you had, about topics you never considered, and will do it in a clear, easy, empathetic and—how else?—accessible way.
I'm grateful that it's short and approachable enough that busy, stressed people can still page through it as a reference and come away with valuable, actionable knowledge. Ladau also included a section with books, films, online videos, and hashtags to follow if you learn better in other formats. (A great example of universal design in education!)
I learned quite a lot of things from this book. For context, I'm a two-time Paralympian and my years of community with international adaptive sports led me to assume I knew more about this topic than the average person. That might be true, but I also have big gaps in my knowledge that came from being born with an orthopedic disability that meant I grew up in a wheelchair. These days, I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user, and sometimes go out on crutches instead. People have assumed for a long time that I'm an expert on disability, but a childhood in a wheelchair framed my understanding of disability as something you could see, some tangible and obvious difference.
Because of that, I have absolutely done ableist things like accuse people of faking their need for an accessible parking spot because I couldn't see a disability. It wasn't until a brave friend pointed out her own invisible disability that I stopped doing that. Eventually I had personal experience with invisible acquired disabilities (like migraines, C-PTSD, and depression) and understood on a deeper level the harm I had done.
Few of my own specific experiences prepared me to join the wider disability community the way Ladau's book prepared me. I went into my first Paralympic Games at age 19 with no clue how to be an ally to people with visual disabilities, or how best to talk to someone with stutters or slurred speech. (I'm reminded of the time that certain athletes with Cerebral Palsy had gone sightseeing and come back to the Athlete's Village inebriated. Your secret is safe with me!) We learned as we went, messy and chaotic, trying to find the energy to educate each other—not to mention coaches, staff, and volunteers—and learn from our mistakes at a time when the word "ableist" didn't even exist yet. (Ableism itself is timeless and has been a force my whole life, long before I had language to talk about it, or understand how I was capable of ableism too.) It would have been a huge relief to have a book like this to help guide me through it.
This book isn't perfect. I disagree on a couple of items that are a matter of opinion, and I wish she'd had the space to go more in depth on some topics, or cover them at all (like how many Deaf people don't consider themselves disabled, and have more in common with cultures and communities that face linguistic barriers). But I understand brevity is crucially important in a resource like this. And our different outlooks are more evidence that disability is not a monolith! It's possibly the most diverse marginalized identity of all, because anyone from any background can become disabled at any moment. Of course we're going to have different outlooks on some things.
How I wish I could send Demystifying Disability back in time to my teenage self. I might have made different choices, said different things. And felt less broken. Less alone.
It's amazing how isolating it can feel to have a disablility, especially since, according to the CDC, 26% (one in 4) of adults in the United States have some type of disability. Those numbers come from 2018, prior to the mass-disabling event of the pandemic.
Whether or not you are one of the 61 million adults in America with a disability, or you know folks with disabilities in your circles, or you want to be a better ally, this book will give you more insight and better words to approach the topic.
Maybe you're here because you've hired a disabled employee and want to make sure your office is accessible and your team knows how to be welcoming. This is a great way to get started.
Maybe you're here because you recently became disabled and you're overwhelmed by all the work it takes to be disabled. Maybe you just want some hashtags to follow so you can find your people. Maybe you don't know how to deal with the way everyone either pretends nothing has changed or assumes you're now an expert. This book might be the lighthouse that will help you get your bearings.
Maybe you're here because you just want to flirt with that hot disabled person you met and ask them out for coffee with less anxiety. This book will totally help you feel more confident doing that. Honestly I can think of numerous people I wish had read it before sliding into my DMs. It's not a guidebook for dating and disability (try the short, funny comic book A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability by A. Andrews). But read this book and you'll have more to talk about with less stress. Seriously, if an able-bodied person quoted Alice Wong or Imani Barbarin to me on a date, I would swoon on the spot. If nothing else, reading a book like this may help you connect more easily because they can spend less energy on educating you and more on the flirting. Win-win, if you ask me!
Maybe you're here searching for a book to reduce the mental and emotional labor of educating your friends, family, coworkers, partners, or dates. It's exhausting, right? And demoralizing when someone says that you talk too much about disability. (It's almost as if it affects all parts of our lives!) Save your spoons and send them this book. It will help. And it will still be worthwhile for you to read it, too. Trust me.
Demystifying Disability will answer questions you didn't even know you had, about topics you never considered, and will do it in a clear, easy, empathetic and—how else?—accessible way.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Cancer, Ableism, Forced institutionalization, and Chronic illness
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