Disability Memoir

We think of perception as a passive, mechanical process, as if our eyes are cameras and our ears microphones. But as neurobiologist Susan R. Barry argues, perception is a deeply personal act. Our environments, our relationships, and our actions shape and reshape our senses throughout our lives. This idea is no more apparent than in the cases of people who gain senses as adults. Barry tells the stories of Liam McCoy, practically blind from birth, and Zohra Damji, born deaf, in the decade following surgeries that restored their senses.

What would you do if it happened to you? If you awoke one day when you were twelve years old to be informed that your life was suddenly over? Well . . . Here is what I did. If you became the wealthiest person you would ever know just three and a half years later? What would that be like? Well, this is what it was like when it happened to me.

Have you ever wondered how a blind person pours a cup of coffee? Or how they and their guide dog know when it's safe to cross a busy road? When Lois Strachan lost her sight at the age of 21 years, she had to learn the answers to these and countless other questions of how to live as a blind person in a sighted world. In this delightfully quirky and entertaining book, Lois shares some of the secrets she discovered about how to live an “ordinary” life in an extraordinary way despite her disability.

Poetic Madman showcases and celebrates the creativity and the ability to express my innermost thoughts, ideas, emotions, philosophies, and raw experiences that come with having paranoid schizophrenic disorder. Poetic Madman is sure to open the minds of those who don't understand mental illness and hopefully help to dispel some of the stigmas. The purpose is to give the listener a different take on what they understand to be true about the illness. You may even identify with some of the experiences expressed throughout this work of art.

Subverting an ableist India’s expectations from a disabled person to be ‘inspirational’ and an ‘underdog who made it’ despite their illness, Abhishek Anicca writes about everyday stories of living with disability and chronic illness in this memoir-in-essays.

There are 1.3 billion people around the world who identify as having a disability. When you include friends and family, the disability market touches 53 percent of all consumers. It is the world’s largest emerging market. Unleash Different reveals how companies like Google, PepsiCo, and Nordstrom are attracting people with disabilities as customers and as employees. Replacing “nice to do” with “return on investment” allows market forces to take over and the world’s leading brands to do what they do best: serve a market segment - in this case, the disability market.

In Trust the Dog, the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation introduces listeners to a group of extraordinary people who, thanks to their guide dogs, flourish in a world that assumes the ability to see. Among them are a brother and sister who lost their sight at a very young age and whose dogs essentially helped them grow up, a Serbian girl who fled civil war to find new hope in America, and a newly blind single father determined to keep his family together against all odds.

Adventurous international teacher, Amy Bovaird, is diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a hereditary eye disease that will blind her. In spite of that, she manages to continue teaching overseas. Then her father's final illness brings her back home for good. There, friends and acquaintances begin to notice that she doesn't always recognize them and sometimes stumbles as if drunk! Insensitive students ridicule her in the classroom.

Hearing Maud: A Journey for a Voice is a work of creative non-fiction that details the author’s experiences of deafness after losing most of her hearing at age four. It charts how, as she grew up, she was estranged from people and turned to reading and writing for solace, eventually establishing a career as a writer. Central to her narrative is the story of Maud Praed, the deaf daughter of 19th century Queensland expatriate novelist Rosa Praed.

Hannah Diviney has always known that her experience of the world was fundamentally different from those around her. While her friends went to soccer and dance and little athletics, Hannah was going to physio and doctors' appointments. While her friends got jobs, fell in love and went clubbing, Hannah surrounded herself with the fantastical worlds she found in books. But books where people like her were nowhere to be found. Refusing to accept the narratives, or lack thereof, that she'd been given, Hannah was determined to forge her own path in a world that wasn't designed for her.

Just like fox, Heidi has lived on the outer. The ‘official record’ of her life has been her mental health record: primary diagnosis – schizoaffective; comorbidity – major depression, juvenile autism and not her own memories. This is the living, breathing version of Heidi’s mental health file that psych wards, doctors, mental health staff or rehab workers know little about or worse, use as evidence of diagnoses. This is Heidi’s account of what happened, shadowed by the story of a fox who knows he'll never belong.

Andrea struggles to mourn a man who is still alive as she witnesses her father decline into the depths of Alzheimer's. Denial and devastation color her life when she learns her father, Richard, a recently retired surgeon, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 67. Her dream to grow closer to him is crushed as the reality of his disease is fully realized. Andrea, a mother of three young children, learns to balance motherhood with daughterhood as she grapples to accept her father's fate.

Life moves fast. Too fast for some people. This is the true story of what it's like to live in a world where you can't keep up. Bobby was ten months old when my mom and dad rescued him from birth parents who were slowly killing him. He was adopted into our family after a lengthy custody battle. Instead of that settling him, it set off a lifelong struggle to find a place to belong, a place to call home. Like an old-fashioned merry-go-round, the world moved at a speed that was just too fast for Bobby. He couldn't keep up, which prevented him from keeping a job.

Already facing a wretched cancer diagnosis, a young man’s prospects for survival dim as he learns his treatments have not worked. Writing against the clock, he feverishly authors a story of profound joy and sadness exploring the life he could have lived. Desperately told, his story takes you through poignant memories, intimate relationships, and fantastical triumphs in a quest to make sense of it all and leave a legacy behind.

I am in a bar in Brooklyn listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether or not my life was worth living. So begins Chloé Cooper Jones' bold account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis, she must contend not only with her own physical pain but the emotional discomfort of others. It is only when she unexpectedly becomes a mother that she confronts the demand to live life fully, propelling her on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she'd been denied, and denied herself.

Af's journey starts from the exhilaration of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to confronting a tumour diagnosis at 29. An unexpected return to the UK meant trading Olympic thrills for surgeries and chemotherapy. This isn't just a tale of medical battles but family relationships, friendships and positivity. Af shared his journey on social media with an unfiltered look into the world of cancer treatment. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Brazil and the medical corridors of UK hospitals, Af's tale is one of resilience, humour, and hope.

I wanted to write a book to uplift mentally ill people of the harshest variety, schizophrenic or schizoaffective like I have. I wanted to tell the story of my own life, like some people see me. I am not a pitiable sad case. I am a hero who’s gone on adventures. Sometimes I was unstable, but that is not the purpose of my story.

Run To The Fire is the exhilarating true story of the incredible life of Rick Collins. A Vietnam veteran whose body was maimed by battle, Rick returned home to extreme tragedy and loss. An unlikely superhero, he blazed a standard of endurance, faithfulness, and sacrifice to be emulated.

Often used as a shorthand for tidiness or as the punchline of a joke, OCD is one of society’s most misunderstood disorders and it’s rarely spoken about with such honesty and openness. Beautifully written, moving and often darkly funny, Tuppence recounts what it feels like to share your mind with a nest of scorpions.

This book begins with focusing on dealing with the societal ramifications/stigma of mental health disorders, the LGBTQ spectrum, and also looking at the religious stigma of the two. Finally, I will be telling my life story mainly from the years of 2012 to 2018 for the most part. Coming to terms, with my mental health disorder and identifying as a gay male.