Reviews

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong

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radicalli's review against another edition

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informative fast-paced

5.0

gobriol's review against another edition

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challenging funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

hookerkitty's review

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

2.5

I was disappointed with this book, which is a bummer bc I was really excited to read this. While there were some great essays, many were just a slog to get through. There were also many that I felt didn’t even belong in the book, or at least needed some work (one that pops in my head was the actual transcription of a TEDtalk. What’s worse about that one is it’s about how they found a way to hear sounds in the universe…which we obv cannot hear while reading a book. I think it would’ve been much better to have that person write a new essay about it, rather than having us read a transcription).

Additionally, if you’re going to put content warnings for some of the essays, you should do it for ALL of them (I forget what the intro said about it and forgot to reread it before it was due back to Libby). It’s easier for me to read if I have a warning I’m gonna have trauma smack me in the face. I did end up having to skip a few, some bc my dad died of cancer this year. Def didn’t read the eulogy (which, wth is there a eulogy in this book? So weird)

But anyway, this person [https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4105339598] described my issues with this book the best. Too much anger, not enough focus on how to actually live with disabilities/the areas I was hoping it’d cover (plus many needed better writing/editing) [also I feel hella dirty linking to goodreads lol, but since I’m not seeing a way to filter reviews by rating on here, it would take a redic amount of time to attempt to see if they wrote the review on here as well. So sorry for the demon company, but their review describes stuff better than I can]

I also wish everyone disclosed what the disabilities they have are (I figure out at least one has EDS since I have that too). I find it odd that in a book called “Disability Visibility” some of the people hid what their disabilities actually are.

I do like that a TON of reference material was included at the end; both to read more about the authors within this book and additional related material. I saved all of them plus the passages I liked in a document so I can reference later (I borrowed this on Libby, but I think I’m going to start doing that for all my books as well, or at least ebooks I borrow)

allegra_j's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

3.5

carsonelainee's review against another edition

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5.0

something i’ve learned about myself in the last year is how much i love essay collections. and this one. this one is probably my favorite i’ve ever read. all of the prose is flawless and so beautiful and inviting. it begs you to read more.

something that normally brings me out of the immersion i feel when i read essay collections is when the writing of various essays jumps around and is clunky. in this one, the writing flowed so well. i don’t know if that’s a tribute to alice wing’s editing, but everything was so seamless.

im having a hard time actually thinking of anything intelligent to contribute because it’s a week later and i still don’t have words for this reading experience. i’ve learned a lot and had some serious reflection and i guess that is the most you can hope for out of a nonfiction book/essay collection. i really think this is a book that everyone should read.