THE DISABILITY GUIDE WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR
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ooted in Rights Editor Emily Ladau has gifted the disability community with a short, simple book that packs in just about everything we wish our friends and families understood about disability but don’t know how to tell them. In less than 200 pages, Ladau demonstrates intersectionality and a cross-disability approach, breaks down all the various models we’re subjected to and even presents an updated etiquette guide. She enlists quotes from fellow thinkers with disabilities, such as doctoral student D’Arcee Neal, a Black wheelchair user with cerebral palsy. “Being part of one marginalized community doesn’t absolve you from understanding discrimination from marginalized people whose experiences are different from your own,” he says in her book. She juxtaposes heady quotes like Neal’s with down-to-earth language in the etiquette chapter that spells it out more simply: “Follow the Golden Rule and treat others as you’d like to be treated. But, also, try not to make assumptions about what that may mean.” Although honest, Ladau’s book is especially kind. She understands that we don’t know all there is to know about each other, where we’re from, what abilities we may or may not have or the life experiences that brought us to her book. It’s written for the nondisabled student taking a class and the jaded old activist who’ll go to the mat for the correct (although slightly outdated) personfirst language formula. Read Ladau’s book if you want a primer on the various disability rights movements. Read it if you are interested in our combined history or how language is evolving around all types of disabilities. And give it to a friend or family member or prospective personal assistants to read if you’d like them to understand, gently, where you’re coming from. The following excerpt from chapter two of Ladau’s book deals with what it means to identify as disabled. It’s an insider’s look at who we are, how we see ourselves and how we’d like to be seen. — Josie Byzek
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NEW MOBILITY
