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A list of books--primarily academic, non-fiction, anthologies, and memoirs--that take a political approach to disability, chronic illness, deafness, or madness. Special emphasis on those that address intersections with race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, or class.
Score
A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book.
| 1 |
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The Cancer Journals
by
4.43 avg rating — 5,312 ratings
score: 474,
and
5 people voted
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| 2 |
|
Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (Cultural Front Book 9)
by
3.99 avg rating — 442 ratings
score: 387,
and
4 people voted
|
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| 3 |
|
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation
by
Eli Clare (Goodreads Author)
4.38 avg rating — 2,506 ratings
score: 376,
and
4 people voted
|
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| 4 |
|
Feminist, Queer, Crip
by
4.39 avg rating — 1,032 ratings
score: 374,
and
4 people voted
|
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| 5 |
|
The Disability Studies Reader
by
4.28 avg rating — 302 ratings
score: 280,
and
3 people voted
|
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| 6 |
|
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
by
4.45 avg rating — 5,197 ratings
score: 271,
and
3 people voted
|
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| 7 |
|
A Disability History of the United States
by
Kim E. Nielsen (Goodreads Author)
4.08 avg rating — 1,623 ratings
score: 254,
and
3 people voted
|
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| 8 |
|
Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
by
Jennifer Bartlett (Editor)
4.13 avg rating — 252 ratings
score: 199,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 8 |
|
Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement
by
4.29 avg rating — 2,601 ratings
score: 199,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 10 |
|
Never Say Invisible: A Memoir of Living and Being Seen with ALS
by
Jeremy Schreiber (Goodreads Author)
4.49 avg rating — 166 ratings
score: 198,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 11 |
|
Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions (Forecaast; V. 21)
by
Christopher M. Bell (Editor)
4.09 avg rating — 35 ratings
score: 195,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 12 |
|
Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature
by
4.19 avg rating — 304 ratings
score: 191,
and
2 people voted
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| 13 |
|
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
by
4.25 avg rating — 1,876 ratings
score: 188,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 13 |
|
Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life
by
4.55 avg rating — 139 ratings
score: 188,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 15 |
|
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
by
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 7,583 ratings
score: 179,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 16 |
|
Trauma Queen
by
Luna Merbruja (Goodreads Author)
4.30 avg rating — 37 ratings
score: 176,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 17 |
|
Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic
by
4.39 avg rating — 36 ratings
score: 175,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 18 |
|
Feminist Disability Studies
by
Ellen Samuels (Contributor)
4.15 avg rating — 80 ratings
score: 173,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 19 |
|
Kindling
by
Aurora Levins Morales (Goodreads Author)
4.40 avg rating — 100 ratings
score: 165,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 20 |
|
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure
by
Eli Clare (Goodreads Author)
4.45 avg rating — 1,057 ratings
score: 164,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 21 |
|
Sounds Like Home: Growing Up Black and Deaf in the South
by
3.91 avg rating — 97 ratings
score: 163,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 22 |
|
Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness
by
4.39 avg rating — 38 ratings
score: 159,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 23 |
|
Disability Rights and Wrongs
by
3.86 avg rating — 43 ratings
score: 156,
and
2 people voted
|
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| 24 |
|
Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity
by
4.02 avg rating — 163 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 24 |
|
Uprooted: An Anthology on Gender and Illness
by
4.35 avg rating — 23 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 24 |
|
Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience
by
Eileen Cronin (Goodreads Author)
3.81 avg rating — 660 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 24 |
|
Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation
by
4.56 avg rating — 697 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 24 |
|
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
by
Amanda Leduc (Goodreads Author)
4.07 avg rating — 5,899 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 24 |
|
AUTISM CAUSES UNVEILED: The Hidden Traumatic Brain Injury at Birth Causing the Autism Epidemic
by
4.11 avg rating — 18 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 24 |
|
It’s Just a Matter of Balance: You Can’t Put a Straight Leg on a Crooked Man
by
Kevin S. Garrison (Goodreads Author)
4.38 avg rating — 24 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 31 |
|
Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada
by
Liat Ben-moshe (Editor)
4.45 avg rating — 74 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 31 |
|
Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum
by
3.79 avg rating — 192 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 33 |
|
In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America
by
Laurie Edwards (Goodreads Author)
3.49 avg rating — 436 ratings
score: 98,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 34 |
|
The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
by
4.16 avg rating — 626 ratings
score: 97,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 35 |
|
The Rejected Body (Interaction; 11)
by
4.25 avg rating — 171 ratings
score: 96,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 36 |
|
Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws
by
4.01 avg rating — 1,724 ratings
score: 94,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 37 |
|
Inbetweenland
by
Jacks McNamara (Goodreads Author)
4.64 avg rating — 22 ratings
score: 93,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 38 |
|
Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939
by
Natalia Molina (Goodreads Author)
4.09 avg rating — 115 ratings
score: 90,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 39 |
|
The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public
by
Susan Schweik (Goodreads Author)
3.88 avg rating — 168 ratings
score: 89,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 40 |
|
Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
by
4.28 avg rating — 634 ratings
score: 87,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 41 |
|
The Wellness Syndrome
by
Carl Cederström (Goodreads Author)
3.54 avg rating — 518 ratings
score: 86,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 42 |
|
Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (Biopolitics Book 18)
by
Jonathan M. Metzl (Editor)
3.75 avg rating — 155 ratings
score: 82,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 43 |
|
A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan
by
4.44 avg rating — 117 ratings
score: 81,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 44 |
|
Defiant
by
Michael Scott Monje Jr. (Goodreads Author)
4.38 avg rating — 29 ratings
score: 74,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 45 |
|
Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History
by
4.58 avg rating — 45 ratings
score: 73,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 46 |
|
Already Doing It: Intellectual Disability and Sexual Agency
by
4.30 avg rating — 27 ratings
score: 72,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 47 |
|
Criptiques
by
Caitlin Wood (Editor)
4.43 avg rating — 113 ratings
score: 71,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 48 |
|
When The Chant Comes
by
Kay Ulanday Barrett (Goodreads Author)
4.48 avg rating — 116 ratings
score: 68,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 49 |
|
All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism
by
4.55 avg rating — 131 ratings
score: 66,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 50 |
|
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race
by
4.22 avg rating — 1,003 ratings
score: 64,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 51 |
|
The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (The History of Disability, 3)
by
Susan Schweik (Goodreads Author)
3.88 avg rating — 168 ratings
score: 62,
and
1 person voted
|
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| 52 |
|
Depression: A Public Feeling
by
3.91 avg rating — 491 ratings
score: 60,
and
1 person voted
|
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