To mark UK Disability History Month 2023 (16 November to 16 December), members of LSE’s Disability and Wellbeing Staff Network (DAWN) and the wider LSE community recommend seven books about disability and by disabled authors. This selection – covering fiction, memoir, academic writing and poetry – will inform, entertain and inspire readers.
Some of Us Just Fall. Polly Atkin. Sceptre. 2023.
A raw, moving and poetic memoir of living with chronic illness by Polly Atkin, who was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and haemochromatosis in her thirties after years of misdiagnoses, gaslighting and misogyny by the medical profession. Based around the Lake District, Atkin turns to the natural world in search of inspiration for a life lived well with disability, finding both solace and an understanding that nature itself cannot ‘cure all ills’.
Recommended by Helen Flood, Marketing and Project Manager in Consulting at LSE Research and Innovation
Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People. Frances Ryan. Verso. 2019.
From brutal cuts to disability benefits to the indignity and indecency of the means testing system, this book by journalist Frances Ryan offers a devastating indictment of the disproportionate impact of austerity policies on disabled people. It is also, however, a call for action, offering a vision for a society in which disabled people are valued, respected, and supported.
Recommended by Joss Harrison, DAWN Communications Manager and Centre Assistant at LSE’s Phelan US Centre
I Feel Fine. Olivia Muenz. Switchback Books. 2023.
Olivia Muenz’s first book of poetry is a brilliant exploration of language and embodiment, written through her experience of neurodivergence and chronic cognitive fatigue. As they consider ideas of how a brain attempts to make meaning, the poems disarm the reader with disorientating shifts in tone and an interruptive use of punctuation. I would also recommend reading an excerpt from Muenz’s essay “Couch Potato” published in The New England Review (Vol. 44, No. 2 2023) which uses the the titular phrase to explore and challenge representations of the chronically ill body.
Recommended by Anna D’Alton, Managing Editor of the LSE Review of Books Blog
Poor Little Sick Girls. Ione Gamble. Dialogue Publishing. 2022.
Diagnosed with an incurable illness at nineteen, Ione Gamble found herself confined to her bed for up to twenty hours at a time. She began to pick apart our obsession with self-care as perpetuated by social media and celebrity culture, and how it intersects with disability. Gamble’s debut essay collection examines what it means to present as an ‘unacceptable’ woman in the age of Instagram conformity and is the perfect antidote for those who view the wellness industry and girlboss feminism with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Recommended by Helen Flood, Marketing and Project Manager, in Consulting at LSE Research and Innovation
Parable of the Talents. Octavia Butler. Seven Stories Press. 1998.
As a dyslexic, Black woman writing in a genre dominated by white men, Octavia Butler was a pioneering writer of science fiction. Her Parable of the Talents, published in 1998, figures alongside The Handmaid’s Tale as a remarkably prescient warning into the dangers of populism and conservative extremism.
Recommended by Joss Harrison, DAWN Communications Manager and Centre Assistant at LSE’s Phelan US Centre
Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. Brazen. 2023.
Comedian Fern Brady writes with wit, candour and brutal honesty about growing up with undiagnosed autism (a condition frequently under-diagnosed in women) as she flounders through her early years existing on the edge of understanding. Post-diagnosis, she shares how autism has shaped every area of her life, from friendships and relationships to education and career choices, as well as the danger that comes with trying to match others’ baffling social cues. An enlightening and original voice for anyone seeking to understand autism from the female perspective.
Recommended by Helen Flood, Marketing and Project Manager, in Consulting at LSE Research and Innovation
Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds. Arseli Dokumacı. Duke University Press. 2023.Activist Affordances argues that we can all create a more habitable planet if we learn from the adaptive ways in which disabled people improvise everyday tasks. Connecting ideas from the fields of ethnography, psychology, disability studies and performance studies, this is an original book that challenges normative, ableist conceptions of activism and environmental protection. You can read a review of it by Kostadin Karavasilev on LSE Review of Books.
Recommended by Anna D’Alton, Managing Editor of the LSE Review of Books Blog
LSE Review of Books thanks all the members of the LSE community who contributed to this reading list with their book recommendations.
Note: This reading list gives the views of the contributors, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.
