In this guide, you'll find resources to start, continue, or expand on what you know about Disability Justice. This is essentially a Reader's Guide including foundational books about Disability Justice and specified topics within the broad category.
This is not a purely academic research guide. I'm not including ways on how to 'research' Disability. This is more like a highlight reel of texts to read. Its sources include social media creators, poetry, prose, sex tips, and romance books right alongside literary analysis and historical criticism.
Please research each specific text for content and trigger warnings. You can find most content and trigger warnings with the publishers or on authors' specific websites.
Hi!
I'm the records coordination and processing archivist here at Barnard. Personally, I absolutely love studying, reading, and engaging with Disability Justice in all aspects of my life.This is just a slice of potential resources you could use to get started and learn about Disability Justice or read romance, historical criticism, or poetry often written by and for Disabled people.
"Nothing about us, without us"
- Michael Masutha and William Rowland, 1993
Please enjoy this highly curated slice of Disability Justice readings
The following information is taken from Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People, A Disability Justice Primer which is an adapted section from Patty Berne's "Disability Justice - A Working Draft."
"In 2005, disabled queers and activists of color began discussing a “second wave” of disability rights. Many of these first
conversations happened between Patty Berne and Mia Mingus, two queer disabled women of color who were incubated in progressive and radical movements which had failed to address ableism in their politics. Their visioning soon expanded to include others including Leroy Moore, Stacey Milbern, Eli Clare and Sebastian Margaret. These conversations evolved over time, at conferences, over the phone, formal and informal, one-on-one and in groups. While every conversation is built on those that came before it, and it’s possible that there were others who were thinking and talking this way, it is our historical memory that these were the conversations that launched the framework we call disability justice.'
"Disability justice holds a vision born out of collective struggle, drawing upon legacies of cultural and spiritual resistance. Within a thousand underground paths we ignite small persistent fires of rebellion in everyday life. Disabled people of the global majority — Black and brown people — share common ground confronting and subverting colonial powers in our struggle for life and justice. There has always been resistance to all forms of oppression, as we know in our bones that there have also always been disabled people visioning a world where we flourish, a world that values and celebrates us in all our beauty."
Sins Invalid. (2016). Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The basis of movement is our people. [Digital version]. Retrieved from sinsinvalid.org.
Taken from: Sins Invalid Website
