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Disability studies / Disability theory
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 |
The Cancer Journals
by
4.43 avg rating — 5,196 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 — 438 ratings
score: 387,
and
4 people voted
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3 |
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation
by
Eli Clare (Goodreads Author)
4.37 avg rating — 2,491 ratings
score: 376,
and
4 people voted
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4 |
Feminist, Queer, Crip
by
4.39 avg rating — 1,012 ratings
score: 374,
and
4 people voted
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5 |
The Disability Studies Reader
by
4.28 avg rating — 301 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 — 5,160 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)
4.07 avg rating — 1,589 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)
4.14 avg rating — 253 ratings
score: 199,
and
2 people voted
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8 |
Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement
by
4.30 avg rating — 2,470 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)
4.51 avg rating — 164 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 — 303 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 — 1,856 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 — 138 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 — 7,463 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
4.40 avg rating — 35 ratings
score: 175,
and
2 people voted
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18 |
Feminist Disability Studies
by
Ellen Samuels (Contributor)
4.14 avg rating — 79 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 — 1,044 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 — 96 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
4.01 avg rating — 161 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 — 657 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
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24 |
Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation
by
4.56 avg rating — 685 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 — 5,818 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
3.93 avg rating — 15 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
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30 |
Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada
by
Liat Ben-moshe (Editor)
4.44 avg rating — 73 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
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30 |
Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum
by
3.79 avg rating — 188 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
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32 |
In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America
by
Laurie Edwards (Goodreads Author)
3.49 avg rating — 434 ratings
score: 98,
and
1 person voted
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33 |
The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
by
4.16 avg rating — 621 ratings
score: 97,
and
1 person voted
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34 |
The Rejected Body (Interaction; 11)
by
4.26 avg rating — 168 ratings
score: 96,
and
1 person voted
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35 |
Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws
by
4.01 avg rating — 1,716 ratings
score: 94,
and
1 person voted
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36 |
Inbetweenland
by
Jacks McNamara (Goodreads Author)
4.64 avg rating — 22 ratings
score: 93,
and
1 person voted
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37 |
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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38 |
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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39 |
Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
by
4.28 avg rating — 618 ratings
score: 87,
and
1 person voted
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40 |
The Wellness Syndrome
by
Carl Cederström (Goodreads Author)
3.54 avg rating — 517 ratings
score: 86,
and
1 person voted
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41 |
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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42 |
A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan
by
4.44 avg rating — 116 ratings
score: 81,
and
1 person voted
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43 |
Defiant
by
Michael Scott Monje Jr. (Goodreads Author)
4.39 avg rating — 28 ratings
score: 74,
and
1 person voted
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44 |
Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History
by
4.58 avg rating — 45 ratings
score: 73,
and
1 person voted
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45 |
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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46 |
Criptiques
by
Caitlin Wood (Editor)
4.43 avg rating — 113 ratings
score: 71,
and
1 person voted
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47 |
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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48 |
All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism
by
4.55 avg rating — 127 ratings
score: 66,
and
1 person voted
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49 |
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race
by
4.22 avg rating — 994 ratings
score: 64,
and
1 person voted
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50 |
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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51 |
Depression: A Public Feeling
by
3.91 avg rating — 485 ratings
score: 60,
and
1 person voted
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