Disability Memoir

This inspiring autobiography by Helen Keller is an account of her life from her family history up to her last years of college, supplemented by her personal letters from age 7 to 21. This edition includes letters and reports contributed by her teacher, Anne Sullivan, and the editor, John Albert Macy.

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome. But books are his first love - Josh's earliest memories involve fantastic adventures between the pages of Gulliver’s Travels and a passionate infatuation with Fern from Charlotte’s Web. Everything in Josh’s life - from his Mormon upbringing, to finally finding love, to learning to control his tics through lifting - circles back to a close connection with books.

Thousands of soldiers die every year to defend their country. United States Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills was sure that he would become another statistic when, during his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, he was caught in an IED blast four days before his 25th birthday. Against the odds, he lived, but at a severe cost - Travis became one of only five soldiers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to survive a quadruple amputation.

From the disability rights advocate and creator of the #DisabledAndCute viral campaign, a thoughtful, inspiring, and charming collection of essays exploring what it means to be black and disabled in a mostly able-bodied white America.

Diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) at 12, Kira believed she could never backpack away from everything that kept her stomach pain in check. But 13 years later, she hiked the entire 211-mile John Muir Trail — in the face of a debilitating flareup, a breakup, and a gut-wrenching parasite. Kira's (mis)adventures overcoming chronic pain among the breathtaking Sierra Nevada helped her rediscover everything her body was capable of. And in the highs and lows, the beauty and pain, the perseverance and regret, she came to understand true resilience. All to inspire you, the reader, to ...

Blinded at age three, Mike May defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision. Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought startling news: a revolutionary stem-cell transplant surgery could restore May's vision.

Bárbara Anderson narra con brutal franqueza el día a día de tener un hijo con discapacidad: los retos dentro y fuera de casa, las complicaciones de salud y de vida; los cambios de prioridades; el Everest de cada día al tener un hijo con - hasta ahora - un diagnóstico irreversible como es la parálisis cerebral infantil.

In 1895, a specialist straps five-year-old Katharine Hathaway, then suffering from spinal tuberculosis, to a board with halters and pulleys in a failed attempt to prevent her from becoming a “hunchback” like the “little locksmith” who does odd jobs at her family’s home. Forced to endure her confinement for ten years, Katharine remains immobile until age fifteen, only to find that none of it has prevented her from developing a deformity of her own.

After a diagnosis of a degenerative eye disease, John Samuel’s life—and his chance at success—started to vanish. In a world systemically unequipped for accessibility, disability inclusion is often left out of conversations about diversity. For people with disabilities, it can feel impossible to adapt and thrive when you’re already set up for failure.

Growing up with Autism is hard enough. Growing up with Autism when you're a little gay weirdo is almost impossible. Greatest Hits of my Childhood Trauma is the story of a boy fighting to exist in a world that would rather throw him away. From overly religious mothers to prison sentences, drug overdoses, psychiatric facilities, bizarre sexual encounters, and queer high school romance, this tale of 90s middle America is heartbreaking, hilarious, and hard to put down. Alex Dark takes us through the darkest parts of his life with a charm that will keep you coming back for more.

This audiobook provides insight into the life of a neurodiverse Black girl from the Midlands as she embarks on her journey through the UK school system. This book unveils and highlights the unique experiences of neurodiverse people of color and the many challenges they face. In this book, 24-year-old British-Nigerian Oluseyitan Ojedokun gives an account of her struggles through school. She shares the many dreams and goals she had, despite the feeling of constant dismay.

After 30 years of a healthy, rewarding, and exciting life, I wake up in a hospital bed unable to move. The neurosurgeon leans down and breaks the news: You won't regain any function in your body and you will never walk again. My medical insurance sends me home, discontinues my care, and tells me to "adapt to my new life". Little Big Steps is the story of the pivotal moments, interactions, and breakthroughs following the injury that turned my life upside down.

Find Another Dream, written and performed by Maysoon Zayid, is the true story of how a Muslim Jersey girl with cerebral palsy creates her own path to stardom. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, as a child she dreamed of one day dancing on Broadway. As a teen, a bubble-bursting choreographer told her to “find another dream”, so she set her sights on becoming a soap star, undeterred by the fact that the odds were against her.

Im August 2015 macht Katherine May sich auf, um den 1014 Kilometer langen South West Coast Path entlang der Küsten von Somerset, Devon und Cornwall nach Dorset zu wandern. Sie will den Kopf freibekommen, endlich verstehen, warum ihr so vieles in ihrem Leben schwerer zu fallen scheint als anderen: Warum hat sie immer wieder das Gefühl, nicht recht zu verstehen, was andere meinen, wenn sie mit ihr sprechen? Warum verspürt sie so oft den Impuls, aus einer Gruppe Menschen in die Einsamkeit zu flüchten? Und warum empfindet sie es als besonders herausfordernd, Mutter zu sein?

Learning to adapt to life after being diagnosed with chronic pain and illness is extremely difficult. Life as you knew it, along with your hopes and dreams for your life, literally gets turned upside down in an instant. This comes with a lot of deep complicated emotions from grief, sadness, anger, frustration to living in a constant state of uncertainty and stress. Most people assume that if you get sick, a medical professional like Dr. House will work endlessly until they have answers and a cure so you can go back to living the life you used to know.

It never gets better, but it does get easier. That’s the first thing Roz says to anyone who asks him for advice. Anyone who’s fighting like hell, just hanging on or putting the pieces back together. When you’re broken, fixed becomes an obsession.

While society called his disability an obstacle and limitation, Neil argued that his "flourishing dystonia" allowed him to think, explore, and create art in a way most people cannot. True to his words, Neil embraced every opportunity to experience life to its fullest, from navigating the Alaskan wilderness in a wheelchair to commanding the spotlight on stage. In this deeply personal account, Neil invites listeners into his world as he remembers adventures and escapades, triumphs and disappointments.

Jonathan Mooney blends anecdote, expertise, and memoir to present a new mode of thinking about how we live and learn - individually, uniquely, and with advantages and upshots to every type of brain and body. He explores the toll that being not normal takes on kids and adults when they’re trapped in environments that label them, shame them, and tell them, even in subtle ways, that they are the problem.

Can four words change a life? On a rainy autumn day, four words changed the life of a young cardiology nurse. Four little words hurled across a dimly lit exam room struck fear in a mother’s heart. “You are legally blind.” Anita’s journey through blindness began with the devastating diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa, an untreatable, degenerative retinal disease. At the age of 33, she was forced to face not only vision loss, but also the loss of driving, her nursing career, and even her independence. Anita was convinced that life was over.

Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with motor neurone disease, also known as ALS, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand. Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: 50 things he wanted Royd to do after his death.