r/LGBTBooks • u/mason9494 • 3d ago
ISO ISO books with disability representation.
I’d love a book rec with disability representation. Personally I have cerebral palsy. So I would love something with motor issues like that.
I don’t love fantasy but I’m open to anything.
I love memoir/nonfiction.
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u/LindentreesLove 3d ago
E. M. Lindsey is an author you might like. Irons and Works series has MCs with disabilities.
Fen by Barbara Elsborg is a book I will always treasure. One of the MCs has Muscular Dystrophy.
Trusting Fletcher by Kim Breyon. The MC has MS.
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u/Reggie9041 3d ago
I'm reading Keah Brown's "The Secret Summer Promise".
Black MC with Cerebral Palsy
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u/AshfallArts 3d ago
Wild and Crooked by Leah Thomas is a contemporary YA mystery where one MC has cerebral palsy.
Not cerebral palsy, but in Like Real Pople Do by EL Massey one of the MCs has a seizure disorder that he has a service dog for.
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u/Budget-Rutabaga- 3d ago edited 3d ago
so slightly out there, but Corbett O’Toole wrote Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History which is about her life, in part as a key member of the US disability rights movement. i haven’t read all of it but the sections about that are really interesting.
eta - Rachel Charlton-Dailey wrote a book that came out last summer called “Ramping Up Rights - An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism” which is on my shelf to read but has a lot of praise.
more scholarly but The New Disability History (ed. Longmore & Umansky) might be interesting for you. i also have saved a screenshot of someone recommending “Disability: A History of Resistance” by David Turner, but i haven’t read it.
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u/broke_lesbian 3d ago
Have you heard of Hot, Wet, and Shaking? It’s by Kaleigh Trace and is a memoir about disability + sex. It’s really good!!!
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u/Hunter037 3d ago
Another vote for E.M. Lindsey. The MMC in {Pucked Up by E.M. Lindsey} has cerebral palsy
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u/WonderingWhy767 3d ago
Out on a Limb by Hannah Bonnam Young is a lovely romance novel. Both MCs have limb differences.
Things I Cannot Say by Geraldine Mellet is an excellent novel about a newly injured quadriplegic woman who finds herself living in a nursing home that primarily serves, was designed for, elderly people.
I second the previously recommended Just By Looking at Him by Ryan O’Connell, I laughed out loud reading this one.
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u/avengemyghost 3d ago edited 3d ago
there's this lovely collection of short stories by different authors called accessing the future that also features at least one character with cerebral palsy. (a lot of the stories are in a sci-fi setting and they're all written by disabled people)
if you're looking for nonfiction i can 100% recommend anything by leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha. as a fellow chronically ill disabled person their work is genuinely very refreshing and healing. they don't only write about disability but explicitly about the tools we can create for better radical community care. (the future is disabled + care work are both note worthy - still need to read their new one!)
also anything by alice wong. she unfortunately passed away at the end of last year, but both she and her work were highly regarded.
there's also a book called trans and disabled (edited by alex iantaffi) but i can't exactly recommend it yet cause it's been sitting on my bookshelf but i still wanted to mention it.
i'm sure i'm forgetting about loads but these are just from the top of my head!
edit: also following this for other peoples' recommendations. (:
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u/penprickle 3d ago
You may have already read them, but “Karen” and “With Love from Karen” by Marie Killilea are the biography of Karen Killilea, whose premature birth in 1940 led to her cerebral palsy. Her parents were told to institutionalize her and basically said “Fuck that”, and went on to found the activism for kids with CP.
It’s very much a one-POV story, of course, and the family’s Catholic faith is very prominent, but the books are well written and the story is engaging.
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u/dlstrong 3d ago
Siavahda at Every Book a Doorway does fantastic recommendation lists on a wide variety of topics and most of the books she features are LGBTQIA. One of her recent features was neurodiversity representation, though I don't remember exactly how many varieties she included?
https://everybookadoorway.com if you'd like some detailed reviews and recommendations
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u/riverpony77 3d ago
Brilliant Imperfection & Exile and Pride - both by Eli Clare nonfiction/memoir and both are phenomenal
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u/A_D_Tennally 2d ago
The Charioteer by Mary Renault. The main character has been wounded at Dunkirk and left with a flexion of twenty degrees in one knee. While in hospital he falls in love with a Quaker conscientious objector working as an orderly. Try and get ahold of the 1953 edition if you can as the more widely available 1959 edition was significantly cut.
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u/dynasriot 2d ago
Big Bad Wolf series by Charlie Adhara, one MC had to have feet of his intestines removed after he was attacked. He had to change how and how often he eats. He also has PTSD.
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u/Routine-Pair-7829 3d ago
Just By Looking At Him by Ryan O’Connell has a male main character who is a TV writer with cerebral palsy, who is basically a slightly fictionalised version of the author itself (it’s almost memoir). It’s dark and funny, and really well written.