My Disability Is Divine: A Joyful Witness That Defies Ableist Nonsense

by Amy Kenny

What if disability isn't a deficit to be prayed away? What if disability is divine?

In My Disability Is Divine, award-winning author and disabled scholar-practitioner Amy Kenny offers a dynamic spiritual meditation on the beauty and brilliance of disabled lives. Drawing from history, nature, and disability culture, she explores

● ways that disability reveals divine creativity and presence;
● how Scripture celebrates disabled bodyminds; and
● why access, interdependence, and joy are central to the community of creation.

Packed with forgotten histories, witty clapbacks, and shrewd observations, this book is a call to radically reexamine our assumptions about disability--and ourselves.

Both fierce and funny, My Disability Is Divine is a necessary guide for anyone ready to unlearn ableism, celebrate the sacredness of the disability community, and catch a clearer glimpse of how we can create communities of co-flourishing.

Genres: Disability, Religion, Faith, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

Published September 22, 2026

About the author

Amy Kenny is a Lecturer at University of California, Riverside

Reviews

[Ronnie Rossignol · Rating 0.25 out of 5]

To summarize this book in a sentence: This is a poorly written, self-masturbatory Wattpad-esque memoir parading as an overarching authority on the disabled experience from the perspective of a well-off, highly resourced, nonapparently disabled white woman who wants readers to think she's suffered more oppression than she truly has. The book is chock full of unoriginal, misplaced puns; flowery, meaningless language; and misused pop culture references. It is so poorly written that I started questioning whether I somehow got a pre-edited, unpublished copy. More concerningly, the book is filled with anecdotes about vulnerable populations that Kenny exploits to make herself seem like, in her words, "a prophet." Centering herself in the story of a woman dying of cancer; portraying homeless people as bickering children; using the stories of nameless Black women and students. It's almost laughable how obviously she is using these stories to make her seem like a good (and "connected to oppression") person, rather than actually caring about the liberation of the people she purports to support. To her audience, Kenny offers a masterclass in narcissistic white saviorism and victim complexes.

I want to preface this review with the fact that I am a disabled manual wheelchair user of color active in disability justice spaces, lest this book review end up in her next book (God forbid) as an example of "ableism" she's experienced. My contempt for this book isn't because Kenny is disabled–it's because she's microaggressive, obsessed with herself, and has no genuine understanding of systemic issues disabled people face beyond the surface level. I bring up systemic justice only because she discusses disability justice in the book, which is a movement founded by queer disabled people of color that is explicitly anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and for collective liberation. It advocates for Black and Palestinian liberation, prison abolition, decolonization, and systemic overhaul. Kenny waters down these principles in a dangerously liberal way, defanging what should be a movement for radical change; as such, she would do well not to attach herself to this movement (without first engaging in some serious education). (See Sins Invalid’s 10 Principles of Disability Justice.)

The way Kenny talks about her own identities is what first clued me into her questionable and self-centered understanding of the world around her. It is exhausting to watch white disabled people, especially white disabled Americans (which, to be clear, includes Kenny, despite her constant mention of Australia), attempt to separate themselves from their whiteness by invoking other, more marginalized identities. To make clear to the readers that she is attached to some form of ancestral oppression, Kenny identifies herself as “descendant of convicts who worked the land that is now known as Australia,” invoking what she may believe to be a prison-industrial complex reference. However, dear reader, if Kenny actually knew Australian history, she would know that these “convicts” were central to the British colonial project in the Pacific. Many, in fact, chose to come to Australia knowing the British wanted to give them land and wives in exchange for what the British government considered the “civilization” of the land. This led to the development of thousands of cotton, sugar, and coconut plantations in Australia and surrounding islands, making the landmass the center of white British power in the Pacific because of the settler colonialism of Kenny’s ancestors. And, to be clear, it was thousands of Indian and Melanesian laborers “who worked the land,” as she so quaintly put it. You are not innocent of colonization just because your “ancestor” was a convict. (For further reading, Matt K. Matsuda's Pacific Worlds offers a substantial history of Pacific colonialisms.)

Beyond her constant reminder that she was born in another country, Kenny seems to be trying to attach herself to some form of indigeneity. Throughout the book, she refers to God as “Creator,” a reference to the First Nations translation of the New Testament (whole colonialist can of worms there…), which seems to be the white Protestant version of doing yoga and burning sage. She also mentions Diné, Māori, and Aṉangu cultural perceptions of disability, one-off, flattening references that recur with several other groups throughout the book.

I find her identity… struggles (?) incredibly relevant to the fact that the book is filled with an abundance of self-pitying nonsense. She tells a story, for example, about one of her friends dying from lung cancer–in the story, “Sharon was sedated, but I was the one who felt like a zombie.” To further demonstrate her empathy for Sharon (would Sharon have wanted the worst moments of her life in a book anyway?), she fills the chapter with lung and breathing puns. She includes another section about her coworker having a headache and her colleagues expressing sympathy for his pain. Kenny takes this personally, stating that “my colleague received more sympathy for one headache than I had in the weeks of enduring dental dungeon.” Ironic, given she doesn’t want to build “a community where we all compete for gold in the Oppression Olympics.” God forbid someone complains about a headache.

Chapter 4 is full of this aggravating “I have it harder than everyone else” mentality–“I am at war. The target: me.” and “I am alone again, naturally,” which Kenny repeats six times like a Rupi Kaur poem. Her stories are also incredibly hard to believe based on the sheer volume of blatantly ableist rhetoric she alleges–in one story, as she’s traveling from the airport to her home (?) with her husband, “a woman leers at us,” people on the street “are looking at me,” someone says, “you're so lucky to have someone who will put up with your disability,” someone wonders “loudly whether it's 'safe for a wheelchair' to go that fast,” and they pass “sneers…fears…[and] leers.” Reader, let me remind you that I am a fellow wheelchair user (manual, not a scooter, which I think makes this worse); I have never experienced five people outwardly making negative comments about my chair in one trip, and rarely do I get glared at, hit, have trash thrown at me, or experience any other flagrantly abusive behavior directed at me as she alleges in the book. Kenny is either projecting or lying, or lives in some horrific hellhole unknown to humankind where conventionally attractive, invisibly disabled white women get spit on on the street. Woe is her, the most oppressed person in the world, in her “interabled” heterosexual monoracial relationship.

Kenny’s identity in mind, I would like to address one of the most harmful aspects of this book–the way she treats Black women and Black culture. The only funny portion of this section is Kenny’s characterization of Lachi’s music. She says it’s “Lauryn Hill meets Alicia Keys meets Doechii.” I have to laugh because it seems like Kenny has just listed three Black women artists she’s heard of–a melodic rap artist, a soul artist, and a hip-hop/R&B artist. Reader, Lachi’s genre is EDM–the kind of stuff you’d hear at a rave. Genuinely, these artists could not be more hilariously different.

Beyond that, she randomly brings up various racial identities, seemingly just to hit some sort of weird diversity word count. Talking about the sensory room at her workplace, she writes, “‘There aren't many places on campus where I would feel comfortable enough to sit on the floor,’ a Black autistic student admitted to me later.” The identification of the student as Black serves no purpose–Kenny does not go on to note how Black neurodiverse people are far less likely to be given what they need to succeed in academia, nor how Black disabled people are less likely to receive adequate healthcare, nor that Black neurodiverse people are at a far greater risk of police violence if they’re visibly neurodiverse. It was seemingly just an “I interact with Black people” moment. She does, later in the book, state, “we're so convinced that someone is acting contrary or scary, particularly if that someone is an autistic Black person.” Dear Reader, in searching for whether Kenny has ever done anything in her life to advocate for disabled people of color, I found some gossip deliciously pertinent to that quote... This post alleges Kenny fired a Black autistic woman after the woman reported her for microaggressive language–the woman had a panic attack and Kenny called her “reactive,” then fired her a month later after the woman tried to talk to her about it. Guess she really did mean “we” when she said “we’re” convinced an autistic Black person is acting scary. Interesting.

I was additionally pretty bewildered to see Kenny use AAVE, mostly improperly and often for comedic effect, over a dozen times (e.g., “she's giving royalty,” “boy, bye,” “it sent me,” “clap back by quoting God,” “but some days, when I have enough courage to let myself cook, I wish I wasn't so lonely”). The comedic use of AAVE & Ebonics by white people is a trend long documented by Black activists and sociolinguistic academics as a toned-down descendant of minstrel shows, particularly when the dialect is used mockingly against Black people. To Kenny’s credit, that is not the case here. But for someone who mentions Black women so frequently in her book, I am surprised she hasn’t run into any discussion of the appropriation of AAVE (unless, that is, she actually hasn’t interacted with Black culture all that much at her PWI… something to consider). What she perceives to be the comedic usage of “Gen-Z language” is actually just more of the same uneducated exploitation of Blackness. If she didn’t portray herself as Perfect “Woke” (also AAVE) Queen #1, I would perhaps have a little more sympathy for this (VERY FREQUENT) misstep. However, as the rest of this review shows, my sympathy is running quite low. (For an intro discussion of AAVE, see TikTok Language: What’s up with the Misuse of AAVE? For an academic analysis, see Smokoski, Hanna L., "Voicing the Other: Mock AAVE on Social Media.")

Finally, and most egregiously, if the “I have Black friends” trope, the firing, and AAVE usage didn’t convince you, let this quote tilt the scales towards anti-Blackness:

“Study after study confirms that Black women in particular are more likely to receive anti-anxiety medication or outright discharge when presenting pain in the emergency room. What's the data for disabled women, you ask? I wish I could tell you. We don't have the stats, because medicine doesn't care about us enough to study that.”

I’m really struggling to put into words how abominable this quote is. Kenny seems to imply that medicine cares more about Black women than white disabled women; that research on the health of Black women gets more attention and funding than the health of white disabled women. She says this in a world where Black women have the worst health outcomes and treatment in the medical field of any demographic group (“Racial/Ethnic and Gender Disparities,” Manuel). She says this in a society where Black women have been denied anesthesia and pain meds during horrific procedures because centuries-old textbooks say they can’t feel pain. She says this as, again, a well-off white woman with health insurance who receives costly specialty and experimental medical treatment for her diagnosed disabilities in a major metropolitan area. Give me a motherfucking break. You are not more oppressed than Black women, oh my God. This is actually insane. I actually have nothing else to say, so I’m going to leave this portion of the review hanging. But let it be known that I view this as unquestionably the worst part of the entire book.

To be clear, I don’t necessarily believe Kenny is intentionally racist. I also don’t believe she’s all that well-intentioned. I think she knowingly does not engage with information that contradicts the way she behaves, even when people tell her to, because it would require mental effort to unpack her biases, and it would harm her image as a “woke” and oppressed maiden locked in a disabled, “descendant of convicts” tower. Should she be forced to acknowledge her own privilege and recognize that others have it harder than her, her whole worldview would have to come crumbling down. And it sure as hell should!

My final topic concerns her treatment of homeless people. Reader, I have worked in homelessness services for the past five years, so this is an issue close to my heart. How perturbed I was, then, to find that Kenny portrays the people she interacts with as childish caricatures as opposed to fully developed human beings, attempts to portray herself in the audience’s subconscious as housing insecure or homeless, and treats the real (or maybe… not real?) stories of homeless men and women as fuel for her own self-aggrandizement. She says, “we were a community with mostly unhoused folks, “we've painted on patios…in a different location after being kicked out,” “thirty people who are unhoused or housing insecure make up our crew”–this could be me reading into the liberal use of the plural first-person pronoun, but given her tendency to claim oppression in other chapters of the book, I’m not optimistic. In describing the “friends experiencing homelessness,” they fight over her (“You're not playing dominoes with him, are you? I thought you were my friend!”) and literally squeal and jump for joy at the things she does for them (“one of our newly housed disabled veterans, like a kid on Christmas morning, in a pitch reserved for dogs and dolphins… ‘Look at this.’ Elena squealed”). You would think she was describing Santa’s elves or a first-grade class, not actual people with histories, complexities, and lives. I certainly can’t say I know how writing a book works, but I'd bet she didn’t get consent from each of these adults to portray them as a squealing “kid on Christmas morning.” I will say this: Kenny, Jesus does not want your saviorism. He doesn’t want you to use other people’s experience for social points or clout (or the profit you’re getting from this book…).

What annoys me generally about this section is that Kenny portrays the unhoused people she works with as essentially perfect angels. They are generous when housed people are vengeful; peaceful when housed people are aggressive; caring when housed people are apathetic. But anyone who has worked with people experiencing homelessness knows that they can be some of the most racist, hateful, mean-spirited people you’ve ever met–just like any other group of people–and they still deserve to be treated like people, given resources, fed, clothed, and cared for regardless. I am concerned that Amy Kenny’s portrayal of homeless people as creatures of childlike innocence means she associates goodness with who deserves her time and care. Let it be known, there are awful, imperfect homeless people, just like there are awful, imperfect nonhomeless people, because homeless people are able and allowed to be fully developed and complex human beings.

Finally, to wrap this up, I want to talk about how Kenny talks about disabled people. Reader, lest you have forgotten, I, too, use a mobility aid. That is why I was completely taken aback to read Kenny describe using a wheelchair as “floating, rolling like a river around every corner, powered by community.” In my experience, using a manual wheelchair in a city is more like nearly getting thrown out every time there’s a crack in the sidewalk, dying trying to get up hills, fighting inaccessible public transportation, etc. Kenny's description of walking as “slapping feet on the pavement…tripping…trotting along” is exactly how I feel in my chair. Yes, it is SO much better than walking, and it is freedom; but it is not soaring. Then, I realized Kenny doesn't use a manual wheelchair, but an electric mobility scooter on a wealthy college campus with good infrastructure, and this depiction began to make sense. Her superiority complex over “walkies” (a term no wheelchair user I know has ever used/heard to describe non-wheelchair users before–they universally hate it) and her universally positive perception of wheeled mobility aids rest solely on the fact that she has a high-quality electric mobility aid which she uses in a wealthy part of her city. Nearly everyone I showed this passage to found the rhetoric incredibly annoying and completely ignorant of the experiences of disabled people who don’t have the technology to move the way she does. To her credit, her description of chairs captures how they feel to use in buildings: smooth, faster than walking, and way more fun. But I certainly don’t “move about the world with a freedom and flow that walkies don't enjoy.” It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, which Kenny must acknowledge. If she wants the world to change, the horrific experience of using a manual wheelchair in under-resourced and moderately-resourced areas also needs to be acknowledged so that the world knows to fix it. But again, she seems mostly concerned with writing this authoritative disability book from her own perspective.

Now, the writing. If this book contained any meaningful message, I would have less of an issue with the 14-year-old-discovering-Tumblr writing style, but the author clearly believes her writing is as profound as her mischaracterization of disabled, Black, and homeless people. Entire pages in more than one chapter are dedicated solely to animal puns that lead nowhere. There is an awful, distracting, constant tendency to use alliteration and lists of threes (“crammed, slammed, and jammed,” “janky and jarring,” “wiggle and jiggle,” “glorious gunk and junk”). This attempt leads to nonsensical sentences–in “disabled people are so often airbrushed or ambushed out,” what does the word “ambushed” mean? More vexing is the constant attempt at clever Dr. Seuss-esque rhyming (“she was in a hurry and forced him to scurry,” “her chop chop needed to be given the chop,” “so much fire it makes a dragon wanna retire”). Nearly every anecdote begins the same way–starting in the middle of the story with a line of dialogue, a tactic which loses its impact after the first or second use. Each paragraph in the first chapter ends in a “zinger” (one after the other: “I don't know how to be human in an inhumane world,” “I don't think this is what Jesus meant when urging us to stay salty,” “Not today, Satan.” “I, too, have read Leviticus and am not afraid to use it,” “The devil is in the details,” “God is having none of it”), and you could cut three-quarters of the first chapter without losing any information whatsoever. Chapter titles barely match their contents, and the book really doesn’t have a throughline–it is unclear what elevators, poop brownies, trees, air conditioning, booty calls, Star Wars, winter, and K-Pop Demon Hunters have to do with each other, or have to do with disability and the church, but rest assured, all of these topics are covered. Honestly, the way this book was published should embarrass the editor and all apparently sycophantic reviewers.

This review is exceedingly harsh, but I am genuinely appalled Kenny has a leadership role in a disability space with such a poor understanding of the disabled experience outside her own–of course, it's at a wealthy, white, exclusionary institution, which probably loves everything she's doing here. This is a deeply unserious book written by someone who thinks too highly of themselves because they've been given every resource needed to succeed. Let this review be an overly brutal lesson to her–get over yourself. Learn and care for others outside your own ego. And absolutely, 100% do not use this book as an authority on the disabled experience.

[Richard Propes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disabled Joy is a real thing, and it's at the heart and soul of Amy Kenny's latest effort "My Disability Is Divine: A Joyful Witness that Defies Ableist Nonsense."

Kenny, an award-winning author and disabled scholar/practitioner who serves as the founder and director of the Disability Cultural Center at Georgetown University, first really came to the public eye with her book "My Body Is Not a Prayer Request." With "My Body Is Not a Prayer Request," Kenny, whom I prefer to call Dr. Kenny because she is Dr. Kenny, does a deep and emotionally resonant dive into the world of contemporary Christianity's institutionalized ableism. As a lifelong paraplegic with spina bifida and a seminary graduate with a ministry background, it was a book that I loved and it was a book that made me downright excited when it was announced that Dr. Kenny would be back with "My Disability Is Divine."

"My Disability Is Divine" is less about exegesis and more about spiritual meditation, a book that starts from the foundational belief, and you should probably guess this from the title, that disability is divine and not a weakness, deficit, sin, or anything else it's often portrayed to be in the Christian institutions that quite often simply don't know what to do with it.

While there's much joy to be found in the pages of "My Disability is Divine," Dr. Kenny is also a little more no-holds-barred here. She's unrelenting, edgy, snarky, achingly vulnerable, and absolutely convicted in her literary call toward a celebration of what she refers to as "disabled bodyminds." Dr. Kenny draws from history, nature, and a rich disability culture to explore the myriad of ways that disability is revealed in Scripture and in divine presence. We learn how and often why access, interdependence, and joy are a part of the disabled life and part of what places disability so centrally into faith communities.

Dr. Kenny also feels a little angrier here, not brutally so but obviously so. It feels like she's tapped into more rejections, more ableism, and more failures by the church.

Truthfully, I'm here for it.

Interdependence, in particular, has been an obsession of mine as of life. Throughout "My Disability Is Divine," I found myself exclaiming "That's what I've been trying to say!" or "Exactly, that's my point." I found myself particularly moved in discussions around those who speak the disability language, a gift that instantly allows my heart, mind, and body to relax.

Dr. Kenny balances vulnerability with confidence and a communal spirit with a refusal to compromise on the absolute sacredness of co-flourishing. She's perhaps more revealing of her own journey here from life in an inter-abled marriage to being an academic to her myriad of physical challenges.

"My Disability Is Divine" is truly filled with joy, but it's a hard-fought for joy that comes from claiming a space many would think you ought not have. She's witty, knowledgeable, deeply compassionate, and still somehow hangs in there with a church that is so regularly disappointing. I've often proclaimed myself that just once I'd like to find a sign proclaiming "all are welcome" where all are actually welcome. I don't think I've ever found a truly accessible church, a particular disappointment given my expectations are actually quite low.

"My Disability Is Divine" is a lovely effort, a next literary stop on a powerful and necessary journey from Dr. Kenny, an entertaining and beautifully informed journey from one of the strongest and most exhilarating voices to burst forth advocating within the arenas of faith and disability.

Often both raging and hilarious, "My Disability Is Dine" is spiritual enlightenment for the uninformed and poorly informed while being a remarkable spiritual companion for those of us who exhaust ourselves trying to survive in an institution that seems to so often not want us.

Hold on to hope, Dr. Kenny seems to be proclaiming. Disability is sacred and together we can create communities where all flourish and where we celebrate accessible co-existence within our churches and with an accessible God.

[Susanna Bullmam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so glad to find this book and have the opportunity to read an arc from Net galley. Due to undiagnosed ADHD and autism as a child social anxiety depression and mood adjustment disorders from adolescence and chronic fatigue I have spent much of my life negotiating a world that was not easy for me for much of that time many of my disability have been invisible but as a current ambulatory disabled woman who use a range of mobility aids from sticks to mobility scooters this book really touched me.

As a Black woman I have in resent years started to see and explore Black Joy but even though I know that through my many health related disabilities I have gained in my understanding of and compassion for other. I have often struggled to reconcile it with my Christian faith and not thought of it in terms of Disabled Joy.

After another depressive episode in the spring of this year I have been starting to to think about how I can share my experiences and help my church better meet the needs of disabled Christian but also recognise what we have to offer the church and society and this book has helped to solidify some of the thoughts I have had and given further reading suggestions to seek out. I will be purchasing this and Amy’s other book My disability is not a prayer request

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Disability Is Divine: A Joyful Witness That Defies Ableist Nonsense

I really enjoyed this book.

As a reader who reads a fair amount of Christian books along with a steady amount of disability books, this combination of the two genres was especially fitting for me.

I think that Amy is an excellent writer and really speaks to the challenges with what people with disabilities go through.

I found the book really helpful, and also quite freeing as well.

Amy's writing was interesting. It is filled with rhymes and quirky quips. I'm not sure if this is her normal style, but it's very playful and unserious. It kind-of clashed a bit with me, as the subject is so meaningful and heavy, but the jokes and puns kind-of detracted from the weight of the subject matter, in my opinion - just something I wanted to note in this review.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys books such as the great books below:
* Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century
* Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally

It also makes me want to read some of Amy's other books, such as My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced review copy of this book.

Check it out if this sounds interesting to you - I recommend it!

3.8/5

[Di · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

✝️ Faith • 💜 Disability Advocacy • 📖 Biblical Perspectives • 🫶 Inclusion • ✨ Self-Worth

Amy Kenny delivers a powerful, thought-provoking perspective on faith, disability, and belonging. I appreciated how she challenges the idea that disability is something that needs fixing rather than recognizing the beauty and purpose within it.

As a woman who grew up with undiagnosed ADHD during a time when it was often dismissed as a "made-up condition," a childhood cancer survivor with severe PTSD from all that I've experience, a survivor of childhood trauma/abandonment/kidnapped/stalked and domestic violence, and now a 4x+ adult multiple cancer survivor living with RA, endometriosis, hyperthyroidism, hearing loss and invisible autoimmune diseases, this one hit differently. 💜

I'm also a mom who tries her hardest to never let her children see just how much she struggles. They don't see the mornings when I literally fall out of bed and have to crawl myself to the bathroom, waiting for my body to cooperate enough that I can move without wincing or limping in pain.

So hearing a perspective that doesn't revolve around being broken, needing fixing, or simply pushing through was incredibly refreshing. For once, I felt seen. 🥹💜

The combination of Scripture, personal experiences, and humor made this both meaningful and eye-opening. A beautiful reminder that compassion, accessibility, and inclusion shouldn't be afterthoughts, especially within the Christian community.

🎧 Narrator: Amy Kenny
⏱️ Runtime: 5 hrs 56 mins
📚 Genre: Christian Nonfiction / Disability Advocacy

Thank you to NetGalley, RBmedia, and Christian Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

🎗️💛 🎗️💛 🎗️💛 🎗️🖤 🎗️🦓 🎗️🩵🤍 🎗️💜 🎗️🧡 🎗️🩵 🎗️💙 🎗️💜 🎗️💜💛 🎗️💜💙 🎗️🤍 🎗️💜 🎗️💛 🎗️🩷🩵

"Not every disability is visible. Not every battle leaves a scar you can see. But every ribbon tells a story."

[Pete · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I really appreciated Amy Kenny’s first book, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request, I felt disappointed with this second book. Continuing from her first book, she proclaims that “We are not the ‘before’ picture of a prayer makeover or the symbol of sin used to guilt others into repenting.” She lives with joy “to resist the notion that disabled lives are not worth living.”

However, this felt like the sort of book written to encourage readers who already agree rather than to winsomely reach those who don’t yet realize they need this message. The title of the book appears to be intentionally provocative. While she does clarify that “To be divine is to be of, from, or like God”—not a claim to be God—it felt like more of a buzzword than a theological claim. Throughout the book, chapter titles call her disability “Radiant,” “Prophetic,” and “Powerful.” Other times we saw the phrases “show up and show out” and “do the work.”

One of her rare mentions of Jesus was that “Jesus cares about meeting access needs.” Her examples include: “Jesus offers remote access to the centurion’s servant (Luke 7:1-10) & Jesus speaks in plain language.” While I agree with some of these examples, I don’t think the point of Jesus going off to pray was that we should build sensory rooms.

The chapter titles reflect that disability is not a unitary experience. Each chapter title begins “My Disability Is…” Her story is “not one strictly of disability positivity or pessimism but a nuance that comes from the wisdom of knowing that life is more complicated than that.” However, the way this nuance was presented often felt like being yanked between two extremes.

Time and again we were dropped into an anecdote, often an example of the “Ableist Nonsense” mentioned in the subtitle. While she later says that we should not cancel people “because they get one word wrong,” this was hard to land after she spent much of the first half of the book sharing righteous anger about microaggressions she has experienced.

She directly addressed how she uses humor to cope and point out idolatry. While I realize she has been hurt by people in church communities, the humor often felt acidic. I was not in the mood for the snark or even her puns (and I usually love puns!). In addition, there were cultural references I didn’t get: for example, once she mentions how in building accessible spaces “silence is golden (and duct tape is silver)”—without any more context on the duct tape.

I appreciated her chapter “My Disability is Interdependent,” in which she points out that everyone has access needs. “An access need is anything someone needs to be able to fully participate in a community.” While I don’t remember her using the term “temporarily abled,” she was going for that idea. She values her disability’s honestly because “some of my peers get to fool themselves longer than I do.” In another chapter, she gave examples of accessibility innovations that benefit everyone. “We are equipped with a divine creativity to solve problems that nondisabled people didn’t even know we had.”

I found her examples of disability art in the chapter “My Disability Is Radiant” to be fascinating. I’ll be spending some time enjoying work from the artists she includes.

[Tanya Marlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr Amy Kenny’s first book, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request, highlighted ableism in the church through a mixture of memoir and cultural insight. It brought a biblical case for centring church communities around disabled people, because when we make things accessible for disabled people, it’s good for everyone.

This second book, My Disability Is Divine has the same feel, interweaving memoir with great cultural insight and a healthy dose of challenge both to Christians and society in general.

She is honest about the pain of disability, describing how she deals with the literal nerve pain she experiences and the equally painful medical gaslighting and social exclusion. (For readers who want to avoid trauma triggers, she helpfully indicates which chapters are ‘safe’).

Yet she is a master of simultaneously celebrating disability and disabled people, so that you feel that you are being invited to an unmissable party.
I particularly valued her reflections on how Creation speaks to the disabled identity. In an interview recently with Julia Watts Belser, they both made the point that it is only soul-less factories that produce ‘perfect products’, identical and shiny; artisans make pottery that is unique, bumpy, and ultimately bears the creator’s finger prints.

If her first book was a call to the church to treat disabled people better and recover a God’s intention for the church, this second book is a call to everyone to be better humans and reflect God’s intention for community and Creation. Beautifully written with wit and grit; I highly recommend it.

[Naomi · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

“Tradition is just peer pressure from dead guys”

As someone who is more familiar with Jewish Disability Studies, I really liked the tone and force of “My Disability is Divine”. Within Jewish circles, we don’t have (as much) theological ableism - as a rabbi and chaplain, it is not common for my Jewish patients to name their illness or disability as punishment from God for sin, nor is there a strong emphasis on praying-disability-away. There is the insidious ableism of “we have no disabled people in our congregation, so we don’t need X” - be it the ramp, the interpreter, the many small access needs that make faith more accessible to all. While Kenny is writing from an obviously Christian perspective, I found her words resonated across faiths. I felt challenged, pushed, and beloved as just another child of God while reading her book.
My only complaint: I did find the use of alliteration, consonance, and assonance to be overwhelming in an audiobook. The poetics and rhyming (especially while listening six hours over two days) to be overly twee. As someone who is used to giving sermons, I know I employ these literary features while sermonizing; and there’s a difference between the occasional use in a 15min sermon, and it comes across as overwhelming in a long form audiobook. No need to gild the lily; the intrinsic holiness of our bodyminds is more than enough.

Thank you to RBmedia | Christian Audio and NetGalley for an ALC.

[Abbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amy Kenny has written a really remarkable book that tackles a disability theology and advocacy with humor and heart, while also not shying away from calling out the church as a whole with their ableist attitudes and resistance to change. While nonfiction isn't normally my go-to, books about disability are a deeply personal exception as my husband and I raise disabled children and navigate church, school, and the world with them. My husband even owns Kenny's first book (My Body is not a Prayer Request), so when I saw this on Netgalley, I jumped on it.

I highlighted so many sentences and paragraphs throughout this book, because a lot of it spoke to me. It's hard to narrow things down, because there's so much to love in this book - from the explanations of how disability is divine (it's probably not what you think she means by that) to the creativeness to the loneliness and lament to the joy and interdependence.

Christians and church leaders everywhere need to read this book with an open mind and a nearby mirror to reflect on their own presuppositions about disability and how disabled people are in God's image and deserving of love, community, and so much more. I can't say enough good things about this book.

[Bastien · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was already a fan of Amy Kenny's writing from My Body is Not a Prayer Request and My Disability is Divine was no disappointment.

Kenny's humorous and pithy style layers puns, pop culture references, and Biblical passages as she reframes the popular Christian perspective on disability. Where others have characterized disability, and by extension disabled people, as evidence of sin and short falling, Kenny instead invites the listener to consider how ALL people are made in Creator's image.

Both a love letter to the disabled community and a testament to some of the many ways the banal horror and violence of ableism has been allowed to permeate the Christian church; this is a must read/listen for de- and reconstructing Christians alike.

(bring tissues)

Thank you to Netgalley for an ALC.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost skipped this one because of the religious vibes in the title and while the Australian author does speak from a religious lens there was still lots of positive and hopeful content about the ways disabled and non disabled people can work together to build a more accessible and mutually beneficial community for everyone.

It was good on audio and very much worth a read. The author has this uniquely funny tone and I really enjoyed all the pop culture references she weaves into her stories. A great blend of personal narrative with concrete suggestions for change steeped with disability advocacy. Highly recommended and I hope the religious connotations don’t put readers off from this worthwhile read!!

[Jamin Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another gem from Amy Kenny that’s full of conviction and humor. This book is an incredible resource that can (1) help the church grow in its understanding of disability, (2) convict us for our many hurtful comments and attitudes toward disabled people, (3) lead us to profoundly appreciate all that the disabled community offers, and (4) help us to become better allies. If you’re new to the discussion, start here or with Kenny’s book, “My Body Is Not a Prayer Request.”

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. Amy Kenny speaks a lot of truths people need to hear (disabled and non-disabled). Ablisism is everywhere, internal, spiritual teachings, and how our culture thinks disable people should be thankful, and present certain ways. But at the end of the day, I didn’t enjoy reading it, due to it feeling too preachy to me.

Thank you NetGalley and Brazos Press. #MyDisabilityIsDivine #NetGalley

[Literary Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving look through a Holy lens at how disability is reflective of the Creative Divine, rather than a "less than" condition. Gave me a new and deeper understanding of how we are all made in God's perfect image.