Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-first Century

Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

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

42 reviews

maeverose's review against another edition

Dnfed @ 48%

This is the second time I’ve attempted to read this - the first time was via audio and I retained very little of it - this time my ebook copy was due back to the library.

I’m not sure if I’ll attempt to read it again, hence why I’m marking it as a dnf instead of putting it back on my tbr as I normally would. I think this book is important and has a lot to offer, especially if you want an insight into the lives of actual disabled people telling their own story, as opposed to inspo porn books/movies made by non-disabled people — It just put me in a bad mood every time I picked it up. I’m currently going through a lot regarding my own disabilities, so it made me feel a bit hopeless.

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korourke's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

Wonderful book, mostly American centred, but so thoroughly examines where we are now, what got us here, and what world we could build.

My fav essays were:
- Unspeakable Conversations by Harriet McBryde Johnson
- Common Cyborg by Jillian Weise
- How to Make a Paper Crane from Rage by Elsa Sjunneson
- Why My Novel Is Dedicated to My Disabled Friend Maddy by A.H. Reaume
- Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time by Ellen Samuels
- Times Up for Me, Too by Carolyn Gehrig
- Still Dreaming Wild Disability Dreams at the End of the World by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

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spacekee's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

5.0

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yourbookishbff's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

Disability Visibility is an anthology of essays edited by disability justice advocate Alice Wong. I don’t think I’ve ever read a collection of stories and perspectives so intersectional, raw and (as a non-disabled person) necessary. The structure of the collection is itself a stunning example of “disabled praxis,” as defined by A.H. Reaume in their essay “Why My Novel is Dedicated to My Disabled Friend Maddy,” as each essay simultaneously adds to and stands apart from preceding narratives, building a collage of experience that reflects the community built by and for those seeking disability justice.

Loosely framed as essays, these range from first-person narratives to transcribed Ted talks to eulogies to artist manifestos to poetry. Several of these stories reflect the trauma and abuse experienced by those living at complex intersections of marginalization, and I was thankful that every essay includes detailed content and trigger warnings at the start. Through this unvarnished truth-telling, the intention of the anthology is made crystal clear - this is a collection rightfully built to amplify disabled voices for the benefit of disabled people and not for the gaze or comfort of non-disabled people.

I read this slowly, over more than a month, and I’m grateful I took my time with it. It challenged me to think about my own areas of deep-seated privilege and about the systems and spaces I have made inaccessible because of this privilege. It expanded my understanding of and respect for inclusivity and helped me to see the ways in which disability rights work has been consistently constrained by non-disabled people. These stories force us to ask, as s.e. smith does in their essay “The Beauty of Spaces Created for and by Disabled People:” “How can we cultivate spaces where everyone has that soaring sense of inclusion, where we can have difficult and meaningful conversations?”

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