Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

The 37 authors featured in Disability Visibility each have unique perspectives on disability as an experience and an identity. A broad variety of disabilities are discussed, including physical disabilities, chronic illnesses, neurodiversity, and mental illnesses. Likewise, the authors are a diverse group in other ways: they hail from multiple racial, sexual, religious, economic, and gender identities and backgrounds. The presence of such a group in and of itself implies a commitment to intersectional solidarity which, in turn, supports the overarching theme of variation in the disabled experience.

Many essays in Disability Visibility draw explicitly from the authors’ experiences of multiple intersecting oppressions. Entire essays in this collection— such as “To Survive Climate Change, Look to Queer and Disabled Folks” and “Disability Solidarity”—are dedicated to exploring this topic. Others, like Britney Wilson’s “On NYC’s Paratransit, Fighting for Safety, Respect, and Human Dignity,” discuss intersecting oppressions to draw emphasize various points. In Wilsons’s case, she uses an anecdote about dealing with racism to help illustrate how she felt while being sexually harassed by an Access-A-Ride driver.

Other essays in this collection discuss intersectional identity without focusing on oppression. In her essay “If You Can’t Fast, Give,” author Maysoon Zayid describes the unique experience of observing

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