In Trumpian times, we need joyful narratives around disability more than ever 

Frances Ryan

When I began to write a book four years ago about life for disabled women and non-binary people, I didn’t bank on it being particularly topical. Publishers love books that hit the zeitgeist – see any endorsement that includes the word “timely” – but I was content with slow and quiet. Stuck in bed with chronic fatigue and pain in my early 30s, on top of growing up as a wheelchair user, I wanted to write something that would connect with other women navigating pillboxes and heat pads alongside careers and dating. On my more grand days, I hoped the book would give disabled women a small slice of a culture that we are too often excluded from or misrepresented by.

What I didn’t anticipate was that as the months went on, and my word count went up, the world would get tougher still for disabled people. In the US, Donald Trump’s re-election has seen an all too predictable attack on minorities, with Robert F Kennedy Jr targeting autistic children. In the U.K., a centre-left Labour government has unexpectedly launched billions of pounds of cuts to disability-related social security. Meanwhile in Gaza, the Israeli onslaught on civilians has deprived disabled Palestinians of basic care whilst causing mass disabling injuries, as the US administration looks on.

As a British journalist and a disabled woman, I’m increasingly struck by our shared fears crossing the Atlantic. Each dark policy, each hateful rhetoric feels as if it eats away at diverse and tolerant societies, pulling back hard-won gains for disabled people and making our lives less secure and more hostile. It is a dread that I know many of you living under Trump are feeling: that there is an ugliness infecting politics – and an increasingly toxic atmosphere towards people who are deemed abnormal, a burden, or of less value.

As my book came out in recent days, I wondered at first whether it was the right time. When many disabled people and our allies are scared for the future, do any of us want optimism and jokes alongside the stats? Perhaps we need that now more than ever. Perhaps now is exactly the time to join together and build an alternative narrative about disability – one that speaks to the richness, nuance, and joy of the disabled experience as well as shining a spotlight on the structural inequalities we still face. And just as crucially, this narrative can elevate disabled voices and put them front and centre of the fight back.

That’s why I’m grateful to the more than 50 well known women and non-binary people with physical and mental health conditions who shared their personal stories for the book – from actor Jameela Jamil, model Jillian Mercado, US BuzzFeed journalist Lara Parker, to this website’s very own Alice Wong. At the same time, I interviewed over 20 experts – from academics, psychologists, to union leaders – about our rights, 99% of whom have a disability themselves. The result is a vast and varied catalogue of disabled life: from stories about workplace microaggressions, friendships forged over social media, to finding freedom (and stares) using mobility aids.

I am not deluded enough to think a book can solve the world’s problems, let alone one I wrote on an iPhone in bed whilst covered in Oreo crumbs. But one thing I’ve learnt as a writer, particularly one from a marginalised group, is that – whilst books really are just books – they can be a uniquely valuable way to connect to others who are like us, all whilst carving out ideas that can educate those who are not. It is possible to be convinced that you’re the only person who has ever been through this or felt these things and then see it on a page and see the margins of your life change. To discover that you are not actually alone. That how you exist in the world – how you look, move, talk – is not some shameful oddity but a mark of strength, value and joy. And one that millions of people share, in the US, UK, and everywhere in between.

 ‘Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girls’ for Life is out now in the US with Fig Tree, Penguin on audiobook and e-book. It is also available in all formats in the U.K.