The Disability Resource Center (DRC) has compiled a list of recommended books by disabled writers, activists, and scholars. This list is non-exhaustive and is meant to serve as a starting place to learn about disability justice, disability identity, and anti-ableism.
UCSF staff, faculty, and learners may request to borrow of any of the books below. For more information, contact [email protected].
Disability Resource Center Books
Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of our Movement is Our People. A disability justice primer. Sins Invalid. (2019). Second edition.
Skin, Tooth, and Bone is a Disability Justice Primer based in the work of Patty Berne and Sins Invalid.
Ladau, E. (2021). Demystifying disability what to know, what to say, and how to be an ally. Ten Speed Press.
Demystifying Disability is a beginners guide to understanding disability and strategies for being a better ally to disabled people.
Wong, A. (2020). Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Edited by Alice Wong, Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century is an anthology that features essays from thirty-seven disabled writers who provide an intersectional analysis into what it means to be a disabled person in the twenty-first century.
Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.
In this collection of essays, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha provides an overview of the Disability Justice framework, a movement that centers disabled queer, trans, BIPOC perspectives.
Schalk, S. (2022, October). Black Disability Politics. Duke University Press.
Open Access copy of Black Disability Politics
In Black Disability Politics Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism from the 1970s to the present.
Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. University of Michigan Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvr33d50
Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center.
Ableism
Barnard Center for Women in Research & Sins Invalid. (2017, May 9). My body doesn't oppress me, society does. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r0MiGWQY2g
Lewis, T. "TL." (2021, January). A working definition of ableism. Talila "TL" Lewis Website. https://www.talilalewis.com/blog/january-2021-working-definition-of-ableism
Disability Justice
Berne, P. (2021, September 24). Disability justice - A working draft by Patty Berne. Sins Invalid. http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/disability-justice-a-working-draft-by-patty-berne
Mingus, M. (2018, April 27). Access intimacy, interdependence, and disability justice. Leaving Evidence. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/access-intimacy-interdependence-and-disability-justice/
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L., & Milbern, S. P. (2022). Disability justice audit tool. Northwest Health Foundation. https://www.northwesthealth.org/djaudittool
Disability Cultural Centers
Elmore, K., Saia, T., & Thomson, E. A. (2018, November). Special feature: An introduction to disability cultural centers in U.S. higher education, part I. AHEAD. https://www.ahead.org/professional-resources/publications/hub/hub-nov-2018/hub-nov-2018-special-feature-disability-cultural-centers
Kudlick, C. J., Beitiks, E. S., & Poremski Rodrigues, C. (2019). San Francisco Disability Community Cultural Center Final Report. https://www.sfhsa.org/sites/default/files/media/document/migrated/SF-ADF%20Evaluation_2021_FINAL.pdf
Disability and Medical Education
Meeks, L. M., & Jain, N. R. (2018, March). Accessibility, inclusion, and action in medical education: Lived experiences of learners and physicians with disabilities. Accessibility, Inclusion, and Action in Medical Education: Lived Experiences of Learners and Physicians with Disabilities. https://store.aamc.org/accessibility-inclusion-and-action-in-medical-education-lived-experiences-of-learners-and-physicians-with-disabilities.html
Erin E. Andrews, Kara B. Ayers, Kathleen S. Brown, Dana S. Dunn, and Carrie R. Pilarski. No Body Is Expendable: Medical Rationing and Disability Justice During the COVID-19 Pandemic . July 2020.
Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF). Improving Access to Health Care for People with Disabilities. 2015.
Borowsky H, Morinis L, Garg M.Disability and Ableism in Medicine: A Curriculum for Medical Students. MedEdPORTAL. Jan, 2021.
Sandra L. Hearn, MD, Pamela J. Hearn, AAS. Working With People with Disabilities: An Interactive Video/Lecture Session for First- and Second-Year Medical Students. June 2020.