BIPOC Books to Read for Disability Pride Month

Wong, an acclaimed disability activist, constructs a collection of essays, poetry, photo-essays, and more centered around the idea of intimacy within the disabled community. While intimacy does entail romantic love — which is explored here — Wong also interprets it as the ways we show up for others, be they friends or those in our larger community.

Sabrina Greenlee is the mother of NFL star DeAndre Hopkins. She’s also a woman who grew up Black, poor, and suffering from different kinds of abuse in South Carolina. Here, she recounts all that she endured and overcame — including an abusive relationship in adulthood, and an attack in 2002 that made her blind — to become the parent she wished she’d had as a child.

In this YA novel, an autistic teen with selective mutism, Ariana Ruiz, hopes to be noticed by her classmates in a positive way for her fire fashion choices. Instead, she gets noticed by the popular Luis Ortega, who takes advantage of her at a party. As she’s still reeling from what happened, the gossipmongers among her classmates get hold of the “hookup” and the story spreads. Then a mysterious little note turns up in her locker that leads her to meeting other students who’ve had similar experiences with Luis. It’s through this group that Ari finds friendship, romance, and a chance for the takedown of raggedy-ass Luis.

SuLin, a teen girl who was orphaned as a child and has a limp from a bout with Polio, is our amateur sleuth in this cozy mystery set in 1930s Singapore. While British abdication and the Japanese are background issues, SuLin steps into the role of governess to the daughter of Sir Harry Palin, the acting governor of Singapore, after her Irish nanny dies. But then there’s another death at the governor’s house, and it’ll take all of SuLin’s skills and cunning to figure out what’s happening. And to survive herself.

Let me just start off by saying that if Talia Hibbert’s Brown Sister series has no fans, it means I’ve left this earthly plane. Get a Life, Chloe Brown starts the series off with the oldest Brown sister, Chloe, who is a chronically ill computer geek who has decided she needs to “get a life.” This life Chloe envisions involves stepping out of her comfort zone by doing things like having fun, carefree sex, traveling, and just being overall more spontaneous. She starts by moving out of her family’s bougie mansion and continues by enlisting the help of Red, a tattooed motorcycle-riding artist (yes, girl). And help her he does — into things, and out of other things, if you know what I mean.

After this one, you have to read the other books in the series, Take a Hint, Dani Brown, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, which both feature disability in different ways.