Disability Memoir

With humility and candor, artist activist Mary Fisher inspires us when, in her eighth decade, she creatively takes on disease, poverty, hunger, injustice, racism and the role of women. Uneasy Silence tells her story of speaking truth to power while living with AIDS, journeying through cancer and surviving a near-death experience. Her steady concern for The Other enables her to find the strength to stand up, speak up and make a difference, inspiring us to do the same.

Carla Sosenko was born with Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome, a rare vascular disorder that resulted in legs of different sizes, a mass of flesh on her back, a hunched posture, and other idiosyncrasies big and small. She spent years trying to hide under layers of clothing, and then experimented with the opposite: wearing tiny dresses and short shorts, daring people to stare so she could make them regret it. No matter what she did, she was worried that she didn’t measure up.

An unexpected journey. An unbreakable spirit. At 26, Non Reyes had it all—a loving family, a promising future, and an adventurous spirit. But in a single instant, everything changed. A devastating accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, forcing him to rebuild his life in ways he never imagined. In An Unexpected Ride, Non shares his deeply personal journey of resilience and rediscovery of purpose after tragedy. With raw honesty and a touch of humor, he reflects on the struggles, triumphs, and everyday victories of life with a disability—offering hope to anyone facing their own ...

Macular degeneration affects over eight million people in the United States. Patients lose central vision, the ability to read fine print and recognize faces. A diagnosis doesn't mean surrendering to these challenges. Instead, understanding this medical condition will help pave the way toward a better future-for yourself or loved one.

This is not a self-help book. This is a war cry. This Is Not a Breakdown: It’s a Bipolar Awakening is a raw, rebellious, no-apologies journey through the chaos and clarity of living with bipolar disorder. Caprice doesn’t sugarcoat the mood swings, the meds, the breakdowns, or the brilliance. He drags the truth into the light — and sets it on fire. For the ones who’ve been called too much. Who’ve disappeared when it got heavy. Who love hard, crash harder, and come back louder. No recovery clichés. No “inspirational” masks. Just real stories, hard-won wisdom, and a whole lot of fire.

What would it be like to see everyone as a friend? Twelve-year-old Eli D'Angelo has a genetic disorder that obliterates social inhibitions, making him irrepressibly friendly, indiscriminately trusting, and unconditionally loving toward everyone he meets. It also makes him enormously vulnerable. Eli lacks the innate skepticism that will help his peers navigate adolescence more safely - and vastly more successfully.

As a senior non-commissioned officer of Delta Force, the most elite and secretive special operations unit in the US military, Command Sergeant Major Tom Satterly fought some of this country's most fearsome enemies. Tom is a legend even among other Tier One special operators. Yet the enemy that cost him three marriages, and ruined his health physically and psychologically, existed in his brain. Told through Satterly's firsthand experiences, it also weaves in the reasons for his career-long battle against the most insidious enemy of all: post-traumatic stress.

On a hot July afternoon, Joni Eareckson Tada's life was dramatically altered in a split second. A reckless dive into shallow water took an athletic young woman from health and success to life as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. In the 45 years since the release of this book - which has more than five million copies in print in over 40 languages - Joni's earnest struggle to find hope has resonated with millions of listeners around the world.

Ido in Autismland opens a window into non-verbal autism through dozens of short, autobiographical essays each offering new insights into autism symptoms, effective and ineffective treatments, and the inner emotional life of a severely autistic boy. In his pithy essays, author Ido Kedar, a brilliant 16-year-old with autism, challenges what he believes are misconceptions in many theories that dominate autism treatment today while he simultaneously chronicles his personal growth in his struggles to overcome his limitations.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write a different story.

The author describes in detail all the insanity, disturbing behaviors, oppressive symptoms, and various feeling associated with the mental battles within her own mind. The author suffers from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder. She struggles with suicidal thoughts and attempts, self-mutilating behaviors, mania, paranoia, anxiety, and psychosis with intense hallucinations of all five of her senses, and multiple delusions, including the belief that she is the "second-coming of Christ".

Ever since he was small, John Robison had longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits, an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes, had earned him the label "social deviant". No guidance came from his mother or his father. It was no wonder he gravitated to machines, which could, at least, be counted on.

Former high school teacher and New York-based comedian Mimi Hayes is a brain injury survivor. She wrote her first humorous memoir while recovering from a traumatic head injury at the age of 22. Her honest take on trauma and love followed her to the stage as a stand-up comedian, where she has performed on stages such as Denver Comedy Works, Broadway Comedy Club, Stand Up NY, Dangerfield's, and The Upright Citizen's Brigade.

Virginia Hall, una joven estadounidense rechazada por el Servicio de su país por ser mujer y por haber perdido la pierna izquierda, fue la primera espía en ingresar a una misión secreta en Francia durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Sus proezas son muestra del valor y la astucia que la caracterizaron como agente. Se infiltró como periodista en Vichy y en Lyon, peligrosamente cerca de los nazis; organizó una red de agentes bajo el territorio enemigo; liberó a prisioneros de situaciones que parecían irremediables; y hasta dinamitó puentes para sabotear las operaciones alemanas.

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth.

At the age of four, Joshua Miele was blinded and badly burned when a delusional neighbor poured sulfuric acid over his head in a crime that shocked New York. It could have ended his life, but instead, Miele—naturally curious, and a born problem solver—not only recovered, but thrived. Throughout his life, Miele has found increasingly inventive ways to succeed in a world built for the sighted, and to help others to do the same. At first reluctant to even think of himself as blind, he eventually embraced his blindness and became a committed advocate for disability and accessibility

Christopher Reeve has mastered the art of turning the impossible into the inevitable. In Nothing Is Impossible, Reeve shows that we are all capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable hardships. Published on the eve of both his fiftieth birthday and the seventh anniversary of his spinal cord injury, Nothing Is Impossible reminds us that life is not to be taken for granted but to be lived fully with zeal, curiosity, and gratitude.

The GIs called her Joey. Hundreds owed their lives to the tiny Filipina who stashed explosives in spare tires, tracked Japanese troop movements, and smuggled maps of fortifications across enemy lines. As the Battle of Manila raged, Josefina Guerrero walked through gunfire to bandage wounds and close the eyes of the dead. Her valor earned her the Medal of Freedom, but what made her a good spy was also destroying her: leprosy, which so horrified the Japanese they refused to search her.

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism - because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us.

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.