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

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Beautiful and raw, this collection of essays is mind-blowingly honest and unapologetic. Told from the first person, these stories are wonderful complex and offer a glimpse into the just as complex and varied experiences of disabled people. 

This is exactly what you don't expect to read: unapologetic, candid, genuine tales of the lived disabled experience. Do not expect inspiration porn or movie of the week stories of overcoming. This book gives space and voice to the realities of the day to day lived experiences of disabled people.

This book served to highlight my shameful ignorance and forced me to confront some of my own biases. This isn't a one-and-done type of book. I challenge you to read this book and not have your world shook. 

Wong does a fantastic job of bringing together many types of voices. A common theme throughout is the unjust marginalization of disabled people and it's intersectionality with other invisibilized qualities, such as poverty, queerness, size, and race. 

This is an absolute must-read and is deserving of a permanent spot on your bookshelf. 

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