Today’s post is an updated version of a post I wrote back in 2022 for Disability Pride Month. I’m sharing books with disabled or chronically ill characters, or written by disabled or chronically ill authors (or both!). It’s hard to put into words how important it is for disabled people to be represented in books – to feel seen in the things you’re reading. And for non-disabled people, reading about disabled characters, or reading about disability, can help broaden your understanding. It’s so important and honestly, something that’s still really lacking.
I’m going to break this up into children’s books, YA and adult fiction, and memoirs / non-fiction. Most of them are books I’ve personally read and recommend, but some (especially the children’s books) come recommended by people I trust. Please don’t think that this is an exhaustive list, either! And I’m not going to share a full review of the books – that would be quite a long post – but I’ll highlight a few in each category.
Children’s Books About Disability
This is the category with which I have the least experience, so I want to should out @stronglikestella, who generously shared many of these recommendations with me! Reading diverse children’s books is so important because the younger that kids are introduced to disability, the more understanding and inclusive of it they’ll be as they get older! I do want to highlight a few books here – Just Ask! is by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has diabetes. I was lucky enough to hear her talk a few years ago, and was really impressed by how she talked about disability! All the Way to the Top is about the incredible disability activists who literally crawled up the steps in DC to advocate for disability rights – it’s such an important story to share! Ali and the Sea Stars is by the amazing Ali Stroker and based on her own experiences about finding herself through musical theater, and she has two books for older kids too – The Chance to Fly and Cut Loose. Finally, When Charley Met Emma and Awesomely Emma are written by Amy Webb (who I follow on Instagram and you should, too!), inspired by her experience with her daughter’s disability.
Shop the books:
YA and Fiction Books about Disability
What’s really exciting to me is how much this list has grown since the last time I wrote it! It makes me so excited to see that there is more representation happening. I’m pretty picky about these kinds of books – nothing takes me out of a story faster than an inaccurate portrayal of disability (even if it’s not “my” disability). It’s just something that’s easy to pick up on if you’re disabled! So you can count on these books being accurate and feeling real.
Starting with some YA books that I really loved – Breathe and Count Back from Ten isabout a Peruvian-American teen with hip dysplasia, written by a Peruvian-American woman with hip dysplasia, and it’s a perfect coming-of-age story. Both Where You See Yourself and Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal center around accepting and embracing your disability while in high school, which is such a critical time for representation. True Biz is also high-school based, and incorporates ASL lessons into the book in such an interesting way.
Just by Looking at Him is written by Ryan O’Connell, who also wrote and acted in the show “Special,” and it follows the same kind of plot about the intersections of sex, disability, relationships, and identity. Baby Teeth is a psychological thriller written by a local Pittsburgh-author who, like her character, has Crohn’s.
I really love how many more romance books I’ve found that have disabled love interests! Seven Days in June is a great romance book where the main character (and the author) have chronic migraines. I loved the Brown sisters trilogy (Get a Life, Chloe Brown, Take a Hint, Dani Brown, and Act Your Age, Eve Brown) from Talia Hibbert, who has fibromyalgia – each of the sisters has a disability-related plot to some extent. I really love all the Bergman Brothers books by Chloe Liese (starting with Only When It’s Us) – each one focuses on a different Bergman family sibling, and a different disability for one of the two main love interests. And the stories are all about being loved because of, not in spite of, someone’s disability. Hannah Bonham-Young is another romance author who has written disabled characters into her love stories in Next of Kin, Next to You, and Out on a Limb.
Finally – fantasy has some disabled representation, too, and in some of the most popular fantasy books right now! I’m sure you’ve heard of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame – the main character, Violet, has Ehler-Danlos Syndrome, just like the author Rebecca Yarros. And I really loved how deftly Leigh Bardugo also incorporated her own experiences with disability into Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.
Shop the books:
Memoirs and Nonfiction Books About Disability
I lot of these – but not all – are memoirs; I really enjoy reading about other disabled people’s lives and experiences. I thought that Keah Brown’s The Pretty One was so much fun to read – she’s very into pop culture, just like me! A Face for Picasso is a memoir that would also be appropriate for a teen to read, but still relatable as an adult, and is all about growing up disabled. When I read Easy Beauty I was cheering on Chloé when, after a series of events, she ended up watching a Beyoncé concert in Milan from a chair ON THE STAGE. My new idol! I was really impressed by Paris Hilton’s discussion of her ADHD in Paris. Sociopath, by Patric Gagne, is fascinating, and will really make you re-think sociopathy and how carelessly we fling around the word.
And of course, there are Shane Burcaw’s books, Laughing at my Nightmare and Strangers Assume my Girlfriend is my Nurse. Shane, like me, has SMA. Alice Wong’s collections of essays, Disability Visibility and Disability Intimacy, are greats look at disability from a variety of perspectives. I also really loved her memoir, Year of the Tiger, and how it incorporated so many different media formats – interview snippets, essays, sketches, lists, and more. Both Haben Girma’s Haben and Judy Heumann’s Being Heumann are memoirs by activists who I really look up to about their own experiences with disability.
Demystifying Disability is a great, practical guide for being a good ally to disabled people – highly recommend! White Supremacy is All Around is part memoir and part guide, and tackles the intersectionality of disability so well. And Dateable is so important – both to help younger disabled people feel better prepared for the dating world, and to help older disabled people feel seen in their own dating experiences.
Shop the books:
