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Good and honest disability representation can be hard to come by. I often wake up in cold sweats remembering Sia’s 2021 Autistic masterpiece Music (note the sarcasm). Misrepresentation of disabled people in media is often caused by a lack of understanding or demonisation of disability. As a disabled bibliophile, I had almost given up finding good representation in literature. But with the help of my buddy and Disability Officer, Neptune, I was able to compile a list of books about disabilities worth reading.
Me, Antman & Fleabag – Gayle Kennedy (2007)
If you thought literary representation of disabled people was scarce, you can imagine just how scarcer it is for First Nations people with disabilities. Presented through twenty-two vignettes, this book follows an unnamed Aboriginal woman, her partner Antman, and their dog Fleabag on a road trip. While the book is full of hilarious anecdotes and quirky characters, most of the vignettes explore the racism that First Nations people still face in this country.
The chapter titled Me, Antman & Fleabag hook up, depicts the author, Gayle Kennedy’s own experience with being taken away from her family, culture, and Country for long periods at a time as a child when she had polio. This vignette highlights the experiences and struggles that many First Nations people with disabilities face.
Turtles All the Way Down – John Green (2017)
Turtles All the Way Down is about a 16-year-old high school student, Aza Holmes, who struggles with OCD and anxiety, searching for a fugitive billionaire. Aza’s OCD manifests through a fear of the human microbiome and infection of the bacterium C. diff. The author, John Green, who is best known for his 2012 YA novel The Fault in Our Stars, also has OCD and describes the novel as his ‘most personal’.
As someone with OCD, it’s nice to see characters with OCD written by people who have it. Oftentimes, OCD in media is greatly misrepresented, with different types of OCD often being demonised (such as mine: hoarding, intrusive thoughts, checking).
Because I’m Not Myself, You See – Ariane Beeston (2024)
Because I’m Not Myself, You See, is a memoir about postpartum psychosis and recovery. Ariane Beeston, a child protection worker and registered psychologist, begins experiencing delusions and hallucinations after the birth of her first child. In the memoir, Beeston talks about keeping her psychosis a secret due to fear and shame, but is ultimately admitted to a mother and baby psychiatric unit. Although it is a memoir about motherhood and the pressures placed on new mothers, it also includes research and expert commentary on a serious illness that rarely gets a mention in media and is underdiagnosed and underreported.
Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed For You – Jenara Nerenberg (2020)
In Divergent Mind, neurodivergent women are brought to the forefront. Nerenberg’s book combines research with the experiences of these women and is a call to action ‘for neurodivergent women to see themselves, and the value of their complexities, more clearly – and further, for workplaces and families to reframe their understanding of neurodiversity, for greater societal systems to hold responsibility and enact immediate change’ (Amelia Read Psychology).
Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body – Rebekah Taussig (2020)
Rebekah Taussig is a writer, teacher, disability advocate, and wheelchair user from Kansas City. After growing up with disability representations coming in the form of the monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), the inspirational (Helen Keller) or the angelic (Forrest Gump), Taussig longed for representation that allowed disabilities to be ‘complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling’ (Goodreads).
Her memoir-in-essays, Sitting Pretty, shows how many people live with varying disabilities on a day-to-day basis, and how disability directly and indirectly affects people, including living independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and everyday ableism in our media.
BONUS: Existing Autistic – Megan Rhiannon (2020) By Jester Roach
Existing Autistic is awash with emotion. Megan Rhiannon offers a comprehensive overview of autistic traits and experiences that are often misunderstood or lesser known. She brings forward her own experiences with her journey to diagnosis, personal aversions and traits, and suggestions for learning how to work with your autistic traits, not against them.
This is a brilliant, relatively short read, and beautifully illustrated. Rhiannon’s words and experiences reached me right to my core and set me back on the path of learning how to coexist peacefully with my autistic traits. If you’re autistic, know someone who is, or wants to learn more about autism, I highly recommend purchasing this self-published book from Megan Rhiannon’s website.
Written by El Bancroft
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