A Literary Prescription for

Disability

Q: I want disabled voices, not stories about disabled people. Where do I look?

This whole list is for you. Wong, Heumann and Taussig are all disabled writers telling their own stories, and the novels were chosen because they let a disabled character be a full person rather than a lesson.

For living fully in the body and the life you have — on your own terms, and no one else’s.

Disability is not a tragedy, and it is not an inspirational lesson for other people. It is simply one of the ways a human life can be lived, and a common one: around one in five people are disabled, through birth, illness, injury or age, visibly or invisibly. What disables you is often less the body itself than a world built as though you were not in it. The books, poems and quotes here come from disabled writers and thinkers, or are chosen in their spirit. They ask you to overcome nothing and to be no one’s inspiration. They offer company, honesty, anger where anger is due, and the plain insistence that your life, exactly as it is, is a whole life worth living.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

These six books come from inside the disability experience — three by disabled writers telling their own stories, and three novels that let a disabled character be a full person rather than a lesson. None of them asks for your pity. What they offer is recognition, honesty, and the company of people who have been where you are.

Disability Visibility

Alice Wong · 2020

Wong gathered dozens of first-person essays by disabled writers — activists, artists, ordinary people — into an anthology that hands them the microphone directly. It is not a ‘Disability 101’ and doesn’t try to be. It is a doorway into disability culture in disabled people’s own words, in all their range and disagreement, and the fastest way to hear the truth of these lives without the usual filter of pity or inspiration.

“The way I’ve learned to live is to accept myself for who I am, not who I once was.”

Being Heumann

Judith Heumann · 2020

The memoir of the woman often called the mother of the disability rights movement. Heumann, who had polio as a child, fought her way through a world that kept telling her no — and helped lead the 1977 sit-in that forced real civil rights into law. Sharp, warm and galvanising, it reframes disability as a matter of justice rather than medicine, and it is impossible to read without feeling a little braver.

Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

Rebekah Taussig · 2020

A collection of warm, funny, clear-eyed essays about an ordinary disabled life — dating, work, kindness that misfires, the strange weight of strangers’ assumptions. Taussig, paralysed since childhood, refuses both pity and the inspiration story, and writes instead about the everyday texture of a real life lived in a wheelchair. If you want proof that a disabled life is simply a life, start here.

Out of My Mind

Sharon M. Draper · 2010

Melody is eleven, brilliant, and has cerebral palsy; she cannot speak, and almost everyone around her mistakes her silence for absence. Then she gets a device that gives her a voice. Draper writes the fury and heartbreak of being underestimated with such force that you will never make that mistake again. Written for younger readers, sharp enough for any age.

Rules

Cynthia Lord · 2006

Twelve-year-old Catherine loves her autistic brother and is quietly exhausted by him, and then befriends Jason, a boy who speaks through a communication book. A tender, honest story about disability, embarrassment, loyalty and what the word ‘normal’ quietly costs everyone. It never flinches, and it never preaches.

Song for a Whale

Lynne Kelly · 2019

Iris is deaf, and good with machines, and mostly unheard by the hearing world around her. When she learns of a whale who sings at a frequency no other whale can detect, she sets out to reach him. A lovely, adventurous story about being the only one who cannot be understood, and the deep human wish to be heard.

Poems about disability

For when prose is not enough

Three short poems, each read in a moment — one for the worth of the overlooked, one for the truth that a life is measured by love, and one for savouring the life you have, exactly as it is.

“Ode”

Arthur O’Shaughnessy, 1874

World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

O’Shaughnessy’s dreamers stand apart from the ordinary world, easily written off — and shape it anyway. For anyone the world has quietly set aside, the lines are a reminder that being overlooked is not the same as being without power, and that the people at the margins have always moved the centre.

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“Abou Ben Adhem”

Leigh Hunt, 1834

‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so,’
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, ‘I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.’

Abou asks to be counted not for what he achieves but for how he loves. It is a quietly radical idea in a world that measures people by output and usefulness: that a life is worth exactly as much as any other, and that the tenderness in it counts for more than the productivity.

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“Loveliest of Trees”

A.E. Housman, 1896

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Housman’s young man does the arithmetic of his own life and reaches a quiet, defiant conclusion: that a life is not made less by being shorter or harder, and the only response worth having is to go out and savour it while it’s here. Whatever shape your life has taken, the cherry is still worth going to see.

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Quotes & Prose

Quotes about disability to keep

A few lines short enough to hold onto, from disabled writers and thinkers who refuse both pity and the inspiration story.

Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives.

Judith Heumann

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I am not your inspiration, thank you very much.

Stella Young

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There is no greater disability in society than the inability to see a person as more.

Robert M. Hensel

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Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity’. Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.

Neil Marcus

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I’ve got 99 problems, and cerebral palsy is just one of them.

Maysoon Zayid

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From Georgia

Pause here, if you need to

A short practice for the days the world feels built against you, whenever you need somewhere gentler to land.

Why One Small Thing Can Change Your Day

A short talk by Georgia Clare

A short talk on how one small, deliberate thing can quietly change the shape of a whole day.

Listen Now For Free

The Inner Peace Toolkit

Digital Self-Care Toolkit · Georgia Clare

2 guided meditations, an Inner Peace Journal, an affirmations eBook, 10 printable affirmation prints and 10 calming phone wallpapers — small daily practices to come back to whenever you need to slow down and reconnect with yourself.

Explore the Toolkit →

The 21-Day Meditation Course

Guided Meditation Course · Georgia Clare

Three weeks of short, guided meditations to help you build a calm, steady daily practice — gently softening how you meet stress, anxiety and overwhelm, one day at a time.

Start the 21-Day Course →

Questions people ask

Reading for Disability

Where should I start?

Begin with Disability Visibility, Alice Wong’s anthology of first-person essays. It hands the microphone to disabled writers themselves, in all their range and disagreement, and it is the fastest way to hear the truth of disabled lives without the usual filter. If a whole book is too much today, the poems below take only a minute.

I want disabled voices, not stories about disabled people. Where do I look?

Then this whole list is for you. Wong, Heumann and Taussig are all disabled writers telling their own stories, and the novels were chosen because they let a disabled character be a full person rather than a lesson. You don’t have to read in order, or finish anything.

Which quotes about disability are worth keeping?

Lines worth keeping include “Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives.” (Judith Heumann) and “I am not your inspiration, thank you very much.” (Stella Young). You’ll find more in the quotes section above.

Isn’t reading about disability a bit depressing?

It doesn’t have to be, and this list isn’t. There is honesty about hard things, and anger where anger is due, but there is also humour, ordinary joy and real defiance. What these writers refuse is the idea that a disabled life is a lesser life. Mostly they are getting on with living, and inviting you to as well.

Disability

Prescribed reading

For when prose is not enough

Quotes about disability to keep

Pause here, if you need to

Reading for Disability

Where should I start?

I want disabled voices, not stories about disabled people. Where do I look?

Which quotes about disability are worth keeping?

Isn’t reading about disability a bit depressing?

More prescriptions await.