Celebrate Diverse Abilities (Disability Awareness Month 2024)

"Phenomenal.... Amemoir that opens into the world, with brilliance, courage, and elegant prose.... This is a book to read, read again, and remember."-Imani Perry, New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award winner South to America Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability. One of Esquire's Best Memoirs of 2024 Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Elle, Them, Book Riot, LitHub, Stylecaster, and Chicago Review of Books In their new book, Shayla Lawson reveals how traveling can itself be a political act, when it can be a dangerous world to be Black, femme, nonbinary, and disabled.With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self. Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year's Eve in Mexico City, Lawson's travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships and the dangers of beauty during a narrow escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post-dictatorship Zimbabwe, then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal. Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica to a traditional theater in Tokyo to a Prince concert in Minnesota and, finally, to finding liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location-and their deepest emotions-to the fullest. In the end, they discover how the trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections can lead to self-transformation and unimagined new freedoms.

When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want--nor are they generally asked. Almost everyone will experience disability at some point in their lives, yet the abled persistently frame disability as an individual's problem rather than a social one. In a warm, feisty voice and vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. To forge a more equitable world, Shew argues that we must eliminate "technoableism"--the harmful belief that technology is a "solution" for disability; that the disabled simply await being "fixed" by technological wizardry; that making society more accessible and equitable is somehow a lesser priority. This badly needed introduction to disability expertise considers mobility devices, medical infrastructure, neurodivergence, and the crucial relationship between disability and race. The future, Shew points out, is surely disabled--whether through changing climate, new diseases, or even through space travel. It's time we looked closely at how we all think about disability technologies and learn to envision disabilities not as liabilities, but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world.

An eye-opening portrait of the diverse disability community as it is today, and how disability attitudes, activism, and representation have evolved since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) In Disability Pride, disabled journalist Ben Mattlin weaves together interviews and reportage to introduce a cavalcade of individuals, ideas, and events in engaging, fast-paced prose. He traces the generation that came of age after the ADA reshaped America, and how it is influencing the future. He documents how autistic self-advocacy and the neurodiversity movement upended views of those whose brains work differently. He lifts the veil on a thriving disability culture-from social media to high fashion, Hollywood to Broadway-showing how the politics of beauty for those with marginalized body types and facial features is sparking widespread change. He also explores the movement's shortcomings, particularly the erasure of nonwhite and LGBTQIA+ people that helped give rise to Disability Justice. He delves into systemic ableism in health care, the right-to-die movement, institutionalization, and the scourge of subminimum-wage labor that some call legalized slavery. And he finds glimmers of hope in how disabled people never give up their fight for parity and fair play. Beautifully written, without anger or pity, Disability Pride is a revealing account of an often misunderstood movement and identity, an inclusive reexamination of society's treatment of those it deems different.

Opposites attract and sparks fly as a passionate dancer and a ladies' man who's given up on love fall for each other-one tango at a time-in this charming debut romance perfect for fans of Talia Hibbert and Blair Fell. Nick Freeman works hard as the star of the weekly karaoke night at his bar, hoping his singing talent, quick wit, and winning smile will distract from his cerebral palsy. But one night at the bar, watching a professional dancer light up the dance floor with her boyfriend, he realizes that entertaining strangers will never give him a fraction of the joy he sees in this woman's eyes. When Hayley Burke notices Nick's reaction to her dancing, she urges him to acknowledge his passion and try a few moves himself-only to be mortified when she realizes Nick can only walk with the aid of a metal walker. As Nick and Hayley fumble through misunderstanding into friendship, Hayley begins to enjoy Nick's company more than that of her self-centered boyfriend. Nick tries to fight his attraction to Hayley, believing she deserves a dance partner who can move like her boyfriend does-but as Hayley and Nick continue to find their rhythm together, she shows him that "dancing" is about so much more than moving your feet. In this fresh-voiced and utterly charming debut novel, Jason B. Dutton takes readers on a swoon-filled journey as two lost souls learn that neither physical disability nor emotional scars disqualify us from finding beauty, validation, and love amidst the chaos of being human.

A hot one-night stand--and an unexpected pregnancy--lead a young woman to someone she can depend on, from the viral TikTok author of Next of Kin and Next to You. "A beautiful love story, full of joy from beginning to end!"--New York Times bestselling author Sarah Adams Winnifred "Win" McNulty has always been wildly independent and not one to be coddled for her limb difference. Win has spent most of her life trying to prove that she can do it all on her own. With some minor adjustments, she's done just fine. Hooking up at a costume party with the incredibly charming Bo changes everything. Win finds herself pregnant--and decides to keep the baby. While Bo is surprisingly elated to step up to the plate, Win is unsure of whether she can handle this new challenge. Together, Win and Bo decide to get to know one another as friends and nothing more while they embark on this parenting journey together. But, as they both should know by now, life rarely goes according to plan.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Practice Makes Perfectcomes an expanded edition of The Match-a charming romance novel about second chances and the healing power of love, with a never-before-seen chapter Sometimes, love finds you when you least expect it... Evie Jones has dedicated her life and very limited funds working for Southern Service Paws, the company that matched her with the love of her life- Charlie, a service-dog trained to assist with her epilepsy. But it's no secret that the company has been struggling to make ends meet. It's up to her and her long-time mentor and boss to throw the fundraiser of a century to keep the doors open. Then Evie meets Jacob Broaden and there are instant sparks-but not the good kind. Although his ten-year-old daughter, Sam, was recently diagnosed with epilepsy, the newly single dad had no idea she set him up for an initial client meeting with Evie. It doesn't take long for Jacob to be convinced that Evie, and her magical, woodland-green eyes, might just be the best thing for him and his daughter. As Evie spends more time with Jacob and helps Sam find her perfect match with a lovable golden retriever named Daisy, she starts longing for something she's never had before-a loving family. For Jacob, falling in love with Evie is the last thing he should be doing, but love has a way of finding those who need it most.