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Got questions about disability in America? Here’s your resource guide

A reading list from the informational to the literary.

[Image Description: A young woman lays on her back, holding up a book to read in the sunshine. She is wearing a light-colored shirt, blue jeans and a pair of sunglasses. In the foreground is a blurred out individual propped up on her elbows. They are sitting in a field of green grass, with small flowers growing around the area.]
[Image Description: A young woman lays on her back, holding up a book to read in the sunshine. She is wearing a light-colored shirt, blue jeans and a pair of sunglasses. In the foreground is a blurred out individual propped up on her elbows. They are sitting in a field of green grass, with small flowers growing around the area.]
Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

This page is a part of our special on the economics of disability. You can listen to the podcast here, check out a full transcript of the episode and read this glossary of terms we used in our coverage throughout the show.


The Marketplace special on the economics of disability covers a number of issues facing roughly one in five people in the United States. The show focuses on employment, education and health care, but there’s so much the team couldn’t cover in an hour, such as language, law, policy and culture. The following reading list from economics of disability co-host Katie Savin is a small sampling of ways you can dive deeper into disability — a topic that intersects with many other social issues and forms of creative expression. 

Not sure where to start? Try following the Disability Visibility Project, curated by Alice Wong, on your favorite social media platform.

Disability Terminology: Person-first versus identity-first

“Disability: A Rose by Any Other Name? ‘People-First’ Language in Canadian Society”

Disability & Representation: A working bibliography

Informational (mostly legal or policy related)

“Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights”

“Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada”

“Schooling the Police: Race, Disability, and the Conduct of School Resource Officers”

“No Pity”

First-person narratives/creative works

“Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure”

“Bodymap: Poems”

“The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays”

“Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Conditions Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine”

“Feminist, Queer, Crip”

Children’s Books

“Why Johnny Doesn’t Flap: NT Is OK!”

“The Princess and the Peanut Allergy”

“Don’t Call Me Special: A First Look at Disability”

Blogs:

CripStory

Mia Mingus: Leaving Evidence

Other Media:

“Basic Able”

“Disability Visibility Project”

“Al Jazeera America’s ‘Deaf in Prison’”

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