July 7, 2025 – July is Disability Pride Month. The Arc's National Council of Self-Advocates announced the 2025 theme as "We Belong Here, and We’re Here to Stay."
"Disability Pride Month is an annual observance in July that celebrates people with disabilities, commemorates the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and promotes disability culture and visibility," the organization's website says. "(The theme) delivers a powerful message – people with disabilities are a vital part of every community. Not someday. Not conditionally. Now."
Browse a list of recently published memoirs and nonfiction by writers and activists with disabilities below. Book descriptions are excerpted from publisher information.
"Brittle Joints" by Maria Sweeney (2024)
When Maria Sweeney was young, she kept count of her broken bones. As she grew older, she stopped. Living with Bruck syndrome, a rare progressive condition that gives her very brittle bones and joint abnormalities, meant that those numbers climbed and climbed.
Today, she struggles every day, living in an often-inaccessible world. As an ambulatory wheelchair user, ordinary actions like entering a building, sitting at a café, or holding a cup of tea can be drastically different for her than for others.
With lush illustrations, Maria tells the story of her lifelong struggle to obtain care in an increasingly complicated and disinterested U.S. healthcare system. But for every step that presents a struggle, there's also beauty, friendship, art, and growth. She documents the relief she's found in alternative therapies, particularly medical marijuana, in loving community and chosen family, and in nature and her creative practice. A powerfully understated critique of our modern world, "Brittle Joints" offers a generous, expansive look at how to live and love amidst the challenges of survival.
"Deaf Utopia: A Memoir – and a Love Letter to a Way of Life" by Nyle DiMarco and Robert Siebert (2022)
Before becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multi-generational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle “failed” his first test – a hearing test – to the joy and excitement of his parents.
In this engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him. A college math major and athlete at Gallaudet – the famed university for the Deaf in Washington, D.C. – Nyle was drawn as a young man to acting and dove headfirst into the reality show competitions "America’s Next Top Model" and "Dancing with the Stars" – ultimately winning both competitions.
Deaf Utopia is more than a memoir, it is a cultural anthem – a proud and defiant song of Deaf culture and a love letter to American Sign Language, Nyle’s primary language. Through his stories and those of his Deaf brothers, parents, and grandparents, Nyle opens many windows into the Deaf experience.
"Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally" by Emily Ladau (2021)
People with disabilities are the world’s largest minority, an estimated 15 percent of the global population. But many of us – disabled and nondisabled alike – don’t know how to act, what to say, or how to be an ally to the disability community. What are the appropriate ways to think, talk, and ask about disability? "Demystifying Disability" is a friendly handbook on important disability issues.
Authored by celebrated disability rights advocate, speaker, and writer Emily Ladau, this practical, intersectional guide offers all readers a welcoming place to understand disability as part of the human experience.
"How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom" by Johanna Hedva (2024)
In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to ask: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, “Sick Woman Theory,” became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism – a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies – we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.
How to Tell When We Will Die expands upon Hedva’s paradigm-shifting perspective in a series of slyly subversive and razor-sharp essays that range from the theoretical to the personal – from Deborah Levy and Susan Sontag to wrestling, kink, mysticism, death, and the color yellow. Drawing from their experiences with America’s byzantine healthcare system, and considering archetypes they call The Psychotic Woman, The Freak, and The Hag in Charge, Hedva offers a bracing indictment of the politics that exploit sickness – relying on and fueling ableism – to the detriment of us all.
In their radical reimagining of a world where care and pain are symbiotic, and our bodies are allowed to live free and well, Hedva implores us to remember that illness is neither an inconvenience or inevitability, but an enlivening and elemental part of being alive.
"Soundtrack of Silence: Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life" by Matt Hay (2024)
As a child, Matt Hay didn’t know his hearing wasn’t the way everyone else processed sound – because of the workarounds he did to fit in, even the school nurse didn’t catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But by the time he was a prospective college student and couldn’t pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay’s condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast.
A personal soundtrack was Hay’s determined compensation for his condition. As a typical Midwestern kid growing up in the 1980s whose life events were pegged to pop music, Hay planned to commit his favorite songs to memory. He prepared a mental playlist of the bands he loved and created a way to tap into his most resonant memories. And the track he needed to cement most clearly? The one he and his new girlfriend, Nora – the love of his life – listened to in the car on their first date.
Made vivid with references to instantly recognizable songs – from the Eagles to Elton John, Bob Marley to Bing Crosby, U2 to Peter Frampton – "Soundtrack of Silence" asks readers to run the soundtrack of their own lives through their minds. It’s an involving memoir of loss and disability, and, ultimately, a both unique and universal love story.
"The Anti-Ableist Manifesto: Smashing Stereotypes, Forging Change, and Building a Disability-Inclusive World" by Tiffany Yu (2024)
As the Asian American daughter of immigrants, living with PTSD, and sustaining a permanent arm injury at age nine, Tiffany Yu is well aware of the intersections of identity that affect us all. She navigated the male-dominated world of corporate finance as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs before founding Diversability, an award-winning community business run by disabled people building disability pride, power, and leadership, and creating the viral "Anti-Ableism" series on TikTok.
Organized from personal to professional, domestic to political, Me to We to Us, "The Anti-Ableist Manifesto" frames context for conversations, breaks down the language of ableism, identifies microaggressions, and offers actions that lead to authentic allyship.
With contributions from disability advocates, activists, authors, entrepreneurs, scholars, educators, and executives, Yu celebrates the power of stories and lived experiences to foster the proximity, intimacy, and humanity of disability identities that have far too often been “othered” and rendered invisible.
"The Deaf Girl: A Memoir of Hearing Loss, Hope, and Fighting Against the Odds" by Abigail Heringer (2024)
Abigail Heringer made her television debut as an instant fan-favorite on season 25 of "The Bachelor." Stepping out of the limousine, she approached her bachelor with a playful declaration: she would be staring at his lips all night for two compelling reasons – her profound deafness since birth and because he had some nice lips!
But Abigail's journey wasn't always marked by such confidence. Growing up deaf and introverted, she dreaded being the center of attention, fearing her disability would burden those around her. Among her hearing peers, she felt like an outsider, simply labeled as "the deaf girl." And after receiving a cochlear implant at the age of two, she subsequently struggled to find her place in the Deaf community, too. Caught in between two worlds and grappling to define her identity as a deaf woman, Abigail felt like she belonged in neither.
Supported by her family, particularly her deaf older sister Rachel, Abigail has come to understand that while being deaf is part of her identity, it doesn't define her. Throughout her journey, marked by challenges and adversity, Abigail has grown into her own strongest advocate, discovering a new voice that is confident, fearless, and empowered – a voice that enables her to proudly reclaim the title of "the deaf girl" she once resisted and rewrite it as a testament to her resilience and strength.
"There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness" by M. Leona Godin (2021)
"There Plant Eyes" probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocular-centric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind.” For millennia, blindness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil).
Godin – who began losing her vision at age ten – illuminates the often-surprising history of both the condition of blindness and the myths and ideas that have grown up around it over the course of generations. She combines an analysis of blindness in art and culture (from King Lear to Star Wars) with a study of the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, embossed printing, digital technology) to paint a vivid personal and cultural history.
A genre-defying work, "There Plant Eyes" reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.
"Whale Eyes: A Memoir About Seeing and Being Seen" by James Robinson (2025)
From Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker James Robinson comes a breathtaking illustrated memoir for middle-grade readers (and adults, too) – inspired by the viral, Emmy-nominated short film "Whale Eyes."
Told through an experimental mix of intimate anecdotes and interactive visuals, this book immerses readers in James’s point of view, allowing them to see the world through his disabling eye conditions.
Readers will get lost as they chase words. They’ll stare into this book while taking a vision test. They’ll hold it upside down as they practice “pretend-reading” … and they’ll follow an unlikely trail toward discovering the power of words.
With poignant illustrations by Eisner Award–nominated artist Brian Rea, James’s story equips readers of all ages with the tools to confront their discomfort with disability and turn confused, blank stares into powerful connections.
"White Supremacy is All Around: Notes from a Black Disabled Woman in a White World" by Akilah Cadet (2024)
Founder and CEO of consulting firm Change Cadet Dr. Akilah Cadet shares a powerful, incisive look at where we are in the fight to dismantle white supremacy—and what we urgently need to do next.
Dr. Akilah Cadet draws from her life experiences and work helping leading brands build inclusive and equitable cultures to offer an informed perspective that prioritizes belonging. In a series of personal stories told with her trademark candor and wit, Dr. Cadet explores the long-term work required to combat structural oppression from her unique vantage point as a Black disabled woman. She tackles everything: from the 2020 “summer of allyship” and depression caused by workplace discrimination to navigating disability and building a consulting business, all with a little inspo from Beyoncé.