Metropolitan Library System

“Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology. It sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences. It's an eye-opening collection that readers will revisit time and time again.” —Chicago Tribune
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability....

The author of Blindsided "gives a voice to the voiceless—the chronically disabled who, in our health-conscious society, are defined by their disease" (Providence [RI] Journal).
New York Times–bestselling author Richard M. Cohen spent three years chronicling the lives of five diverse "citizens of sickness": Denise, who suffers from ALS; Buzz, whose Christian faith helps him deal with his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; Sarah,...

"As a child, Matt Hay didn't know his hearing wasn't the way everyone else processed sound--and like a lot of kids who do workarounds to fit in, even the school nurse didn't catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But as a prospective college student who couldn't pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay's condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast. Soundtrack of Silence was his...

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. Keah Brown loves herself, but that hadn't always been the case. Born with cerebral palsy, her greatest desire used to be normalcy and refuge from the steady stream of self-hate society strengthened inside her. But after...

On paper, Coach Rob Mendez sounds like any other football coach on any other field across America: passionate, authoritative, and knowledgeable. But, he's unlike any other coach you know, in fact, he's probably unlike any other person you know. Born with an extraordinarily rare condition called tetra-Amelia syndrome, Rob has no arms or legs. He moves with the assistance of a custom-made, motorized wheelchair that he operates with his back and shoulders. Many...

If the parents of the disabled find their family experiences to be rarely acknowledged, the siblings in such a family often feel invisible--not only outside in the world but in their own families. The Long Road to Happy is an effort by one such sibling to be seen, to have the experiences of those like her heard. The youngest of three daughters, Diane Morrow-Kondos tells a frank and personal story of an ordinary family in middle America turned upside...

Master of His Fate by James Tobin is an inspiring middle-grade biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with a focus on his battle with polio and how his disease set him on the course to become president. In 1921, FDR contracted polio. Just as he began to set his sights on the New York governorship-and, with great hope, the presidency-FDR became paralyzed from the waist down. FDR faced a radical choice: give up politics or reenter the arena with a...