Category: True Story

When someone asks me, “Disability Pride? What’s that?” I always recommend this book. Emily Ladau provides a wonderful introduction to disability terms, history, and the current disability justice movement. There are lovely illustrations and lists of other books for further reading. Ladau strikes a beautiful balance with her tone. She lays out the facts, but also understands that the people coming to this book genuinely want to learn. She takes such a kind way of introducing nondisabled people to disability studies without shying away from the difficult reality of living in an ableist society.

Piepzna-Samarasinha delves into ideas about Disability Justice, an idea founded on mutual aid and looking at disability from an intersectional perspective. Each essay looks at a different topic presented in a way that highlights Piepzna-Samarasinha’s personal experiences. We see them working in San Francisco as a member of different disability collectives. They describe going on tour with another disability justice activist. We also get an intimate look into Piepzna-Samarasinha’s daily struggles as a disabled person. It’s such a beautiful book. I highlighted SO much of the book that my copy looks like a rainbow exploded across its pages. There are so many lines that I’ve returned to for reassurance, reminding myself that even though I may be physically isolated, I’m not alone.

When Eddie Ndopu learns that he’s just received a full ride to Oxford, he feels elated. Finally, all of his work advocating for disabled people around the world has paid off. But when he contacts the university about covering his accommodations for his disability, they refuse to cover the cost of his caregiver. Ndopu describes the never-ending logistics and financial emergencies he experiences attending Oxford as someone with spinal muscular atrophy. Despite Oxford being one of the richest and oldest universities in the world, they still claimed, over and over again, not to be able to afford his care. Ndopu nevertheless pushes through, fighting not just for himself but for all disabled people who asked for equitable accommodations.

Australian author Cory Taylor is told that there is nothing the doctors can do. She is going to die. After two years of battling cancer, she expected this, but she still finds herself emotionally reeling from the news. Dying is her last testament, her thoughts, feelings, and experiences of going about the business of dying. Taylor finds herself often wandering through her memories of her childhood, thinking of all of the decisions that led to her current life. What would have happened if she made a different decision? Would she still be dying from a fatal illness? A beautiful ode to life and living, Dying is a memoir readers won’t soon forget.

Several years ago, I read Jenny Lawson’s first book Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. It’s a hilarious book about Lawson’s life in Texas. She describes her father’s love of taxidermy and the first — quite eventful — time that her husband met her parents. Her stories are full of the fun and weird things that can happen to us all. Lawson experiences both mental and physical chronic illness. Her work highlights how one can impact the other. And if you are an audiobook fan, she reads her memoir. With her excellent comedic timing, the audiobook of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is perfection.

Born long before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, Alice Wong has watched the world change before her eyes. Now in her memoir, she describes trying to find her own accommodations throughout her life, especially at college, which wasn’t prepared for a student like her who needed a number of different kinds of accommodations. Wong includes photos, transcripts, and articles from throughout her life, giving readers a multimedia sort of memoir. Wong’s stories have been so impactful for so many of us, and it was an honor to read her memoir (or listen to it, in my case).

Cece Bell writes her memoir in the form of a graphic novel for kids. In it, she illustrates herself and the people around her as bunnies — so cute! Bell tells the story of her younger self, and we see Cece contract an illness in childhood, which causes her to lose most of her hearing. The story follows Cece through elementary and middle school as she makes friends and adapts to the various new technologies that help her hear teachers and the other people around her. I’m always looking for more books about disability for kids, so I adored this book. It’s such a great way to introduce children to what it’s like to grow up Deaf. The ensemble provides a chorus of voices for Cece and the other people in her life. And creative editing helps listeners follow along with the story.

There’s a certain magic that happens when you listen to a poet perform their own work. Deaf British Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus narrates his poetry collection, adding brief introductions to some of the poems that describe his use of illustrations of British Sign Language (BSL) in his poetry. Much of Antrobus’ poetry centers around his Deaf and biracial identity, and listeners can hear the emotion hanging on every word. With Antrobus’ attention to detail and moving performance, The Perseverance is a powerful Deaf poetry collection that is equally as impactful on audio.

When a new friend insisted that I needed to read Annie Dillard, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t quite have his literary taste down yet. But when I read The Writing Life, I got the hype. And just last month, I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a gorgeous book of essays that pulls from nature writing traditions. Dillard gives you a multi-seasonal portrait of the world around Tinker Creek, the many creatures that live there, and their life cycles. She writes about the complexity of plants, fish, birds, and bugs — like, A LOT of bugs. I must admit, I was a bit overwhelmed by her fascination with common parasites. But she kind of has a point. The living beings all around us have multifaceted, mesmerizing lives. If only we take the time to look.

Shortly after finishing A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I picked up How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. Chee has an essay about studying with Annie Dillard and details much of her writing advice. His picture of her often feels like one of Dillard’s portraits of some animal or plant she describes in her writing. But this time, Dillard is the one being studied. Chee also writes about his time as a gay rights activist while living in San Francisco in the early 1990s. He has a way of writing about people that capture all those tiny details that make their characterizations seem so true to life.

Back in 2018, Roxane Gay edited an anthology of stories of people who have experienced sexual assault. The essays feature people from all paths of life, and each writer has their own unique story to tell. The contributors include Gabrielle Union, Brandon Taylor, Amy Jo Burns, and Lyz Lenz. When this came out, more and more people were stepping up and telling their #MeToo stories, giving voice to the reality that people live with the long-term effects of sexual assault every day. On the audiobook, each contributor reads their own essay, adding a deeply personal touch to the audio edition.

To date, What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About remains one of the best written anthologies that I’ve ever read. Across the board, these essays have incredible prose and ask the reader to reexamine their assumption about the mother-child relationship and the many dynamics at play. Some of the writers have great relationships with their mothers, but most don’t, and are constantly working to process their childhood and set boundaries as adults in the present.

Recently I’ve been reading back through Jeannie Vanasco’s incredible memoir Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. She begins the book by explaining how she is taking readers along with her experience interviewing the man who sexually assaulted her years ago. They used to be friends, and Vanasco explains that she still hasn’t processed everything that happened. Vanasco has this seamless way that she breaks through the 4th wall. She explains her thought process to her readers, asking questions and thinking through different scenarios.

Randall Kenan is a treasure of American Literature. Kenan grew up in rural North Carolina. In his essays, he describes his childhood with vibrant nature imagery. As a gay Black boy growing up in the mid-20th century, he loved where he grew up, but he always felt out of place. His prose is so moving, and he makes you think about the world in such unique ways. Randall Kenan might be more well-known for his fiction, but his nonfiction is equally stunning.

Narrated by Adenrele Ojo

In the last several years, bell hooks’ books have been slowly turned into audiobooks. Sisters of the Yam was released on audio just last year. The book focuses around hooks’ ideas of self-recovery. She begins Sisters of the Yam by discussing how Black women don’t need self-help, a genre hooks believes doesn’t typically take Black women’s experiences with sexism, homophobia, and racism into account. Instead, hooks calls for self-recovery, which centers on Black women taking care of their physical, mental, and emotional needs. By becoming the best version of themselves, Black women can better support their families and communities.

Narrated by Hala Alyan, Joy Sullivan, Kate Baer

Pushkin has just released a special edition of Mary Oliver’s essay collection Upstream. Performed by poets Hala Alyan, Joy Sullivan, and Kate Baer, Upstream includes a special introduction by each narrator, explaining why they love and have been inspired by Mary Oliver’s work. The narrators perform different sections of the essay collection, which focuses around Oliver’s favorite poets and her thoughts on writing. Oliver’s prose is stunning. She draws from her background as a poet to create perfect descriptions of the natural world. The performances take this audiobook to the next level.

Stacy Jane Grover grew up in Southeastern Ohio, not really viewing herself as Appalachian. But as she moved through the world —transitioning as a teen, falling in and out of love, and trying to find a career— she slowly began engaging with the idea. Grover illustrates a way of being that we don’t often read in literature. Much of trans history focuses on urban centers, but Grover tells a different story where she grew up with her family having a different understanding of who she was. Her grandfather just called her “shy,” which in her region of Appalachia just meant a sort of difference that was accepted, if not understood.

Lamya H figured out she was gay as a teenager in a Muslim school while living in a country in the Middle East. When she moved to America for university, she began to slowly come to terms with her sexuality and what that might mean for her life as a Muslim person. However, she constantly ran into non-Muslim people who told her she couldn’t be Muslim AND queer. That’s not how it worked. Lamya disagreed, finding her own way of being as a queer Muslim. Lamya structures her memoir around different figures from the Qur’an, weaving figures from her faith with her own story.

*Finalist for Bisexual Nonfiction

I first read Hauser’s essay “The Crane Wife” for a class I am taking. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to read the entire collection. And I’m so glad I did. Hauser likes to braid together different topics or moments from their life to create a more complete picture. The essays possess such a strong narrative voice. We feel along with Hauser as they share their mishaps with their family and their romantic entanglements. One could argue that the majority of the essays revolve around Hauser’s relationships with other people, and how different people in their life have taught them how to exist in the world as the best version of themself. Hauser also reads the audiobooks, giving a lovely performance that made me feel like I was sitting in a bookshop or cafe listening as they did an author reading.

*Finalist for Best Lesbian Memoir/Biography

Neema Avashia grew up in a small West Virginia town, and her family was one of a few South Asian families in the area. Her parents immigrated from India so her dad could work at a large plant in rural Appalachia. Avashia shares about her childhood spent hiking around the mountains and playing basketball. She learned key Appalachian values like community care and mutual aid. But she and her family also experienced a lot of racism from the white people in her area. One of my favorite essays is one where Avashia describes how her basketball coach became such an important figure in her life. But leading up to and after the 2016 election, her former coach started posting incredibly racist and anti-immigrant messages on his social media. She wonders how someone who claims to care for her like a daughter could post such hateful things about her and her family?