About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times

by The New York Times (Editor)

Based on the pioneering New York Times series, About Us collects the personal essays and reflections that have transformed the national conversation around disability.

Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are—not as others perceive them—About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented. Speaking not only to those with disabilities, but also to their families, coworkers and support networks, the authors in About Us offer intimate stories of how they navigate a world not built for them.

Since its 2016 debut, the popular New York Times’ “Disability” column has transformed the national dialogue around disability. Now, echoing the refrain of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us,” this landmark collection gathers the most powerful essays from the series that speak to the fullness of human experience—stories about first romance, childhood shame and isolation, segregation, professional ambition, child-bearing and parenting, aging and beyond.

Reflecting on the fraught conversations around disability—from the friend who says “I don’t think of you as disabled,” to the father who scolds his child with attention differences, “Stop it stop it stop it what is wrong with you?”—the stories here reveal the range of responses, and the variety of consequences, to being labeled as “disabled” by the broader public.

Here, a writer recounts her path through medical school as a wheelchair user—forging a unique bridge between patients with disabilities and their physicians. An acclaimed artist with spina bifida discusses her art practice as one that invites us to “stretch ourselves toward a world where all bodies are exquisite.” With these notes of triumph, these stories also offer honest portrayals of frustration over access to medical care, the burden of social stigma and the nearly constant need to self-advocate in the public realm.

In its final sections, About Us turns to the questions of love, family and joy to show how it is possible to revel in life as a person with disabilities. Subverting the pervasive belief that disability results in relentless suffering and isolation, a quadriplegic writer reveals how she rediscovered intimacy without touch, and a mother with a chronic illness shares what her condition has taught her young children.

With a foreword by Andrew Solomon and introductory comments by co-editors Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, About Us is a landmark publication of the disability movement for readers of all backgrounds, forms and abilities.

Topics Include: Becoming Disabled • Mental Illness is not a Horror Show • Disability and the Right to Choose • Brain Injury and the Civil Right We Don’t Think • The Deaf Body in Public Space • The Everyday Anxiety of the Stutterer • I Use a Wheelchair. And Yes, I’m Your Doctor • A Symbol for “Nobody” That’s Really for Everybody • Flying While Blind • My $1,000 Anxiety Attack • A Girlfriend of My Own • The Three-Legged Dog Who Carried Me • Passing My Disability On to My Children • I Have Diabetes. Am I to Blame? • Learning to Sing Again • A Disabled Life is a Life Worth Living

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Disability Studies, Social Justice, Audiobook

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 3, 2019

About the author

The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 112 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. Its website receives 30 million unique visitors per month.

Reviews

[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful always edifying, often moving, collection of articles originally published by the New York Times in its Disability Series. Each piece covers some aspect of being disabled. What does a morning look like for a person with paraplegia? After you have been hospitalized for severe mental illness, how does that change your worklife and the way you are perceived by colleagues? How do you sustain a marriage and parenting when your spouse becomes your caretaker after diagnosis of a progressive degenerative illness? What is it like to have an invisible disability that is easy for people to disregard or scoff at? When you have a genetic disability how does that impact your decision to procreate (and what does it say about your life if tests show that a child will have that disability and parents chose to terminate for that reason?) Why does everyone seem to think people with disabilities are (or should be) inspirational when they are just living their lives? Those issues and many more are covered here. I learned so much from the opportunity to listen to these honest eye-opening articles, and the writing is uniformly excellent. As with any collection some of these pieces work better than others, but it's the New York Times so you can bet on a certain standard of quality. Recommended to all.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of essays, all written by people with disabilities. Insightful feels like a massive under-exaggeration of what this book was for me. My knowledge of the disability rights movement is abysmally small, but this collection is an excellent primer. The essays are short and low on jargon making it truly accessible for anyone to read.

I hope the New York Times continues to publish this column so that we can see more of these collections in the future.

I listened to this on audio which probably wasn't the best decision tbh. The narrators are good, but I think I would have enjoyed this more in print so I could re-read certain passages/essays.

[Christine (Queen of Books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

About Us is a compilation of essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times. I found so many of these essays thought-provoking and inspiring conversation with others. I loved that they're so short, allowing the book to contain a lot of them, showing a range of experiences. As the book states, the essays presented here both normalize and exceptionalize disability. "Disabled lives are as valid as nondisabled lives, but they are not the same."

The essays are grouped under different topics: justice, belonging, working, navigating, coping, love, family, and joy. I read them in order; as such, I was able to see various experiences relating to one specific topic in the span of 15 minutes. The different authors often seem to be in conversation with each other, despite having a variety of backgrounds and perspectives.

This is a book I am certainly glad to have read and am grateful it exists.

Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for a free e-arc of this title for review.


Content warning: recollection and discussion of ableism throughout, suicide in the last essay

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for the #ReadingWomenChallenge2020 anthology challenge.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. I definitely recognized a lot of thoughts and emotions I’ve had, but never expressed. Recommend to all, but especially to people without a disability because it will likely help you understand us.

[Kyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wide-ranging collection of short essays about disabled lives, thematically separated into eight categories: justice, belonging, working, navigating, coping, love, and joy. It could serve as a nice introduction to disability studies. I'd even recommend this to someone who hadn't heard the term "ableism" before, because it's a fairly accessible read and won't drown you in jargon.

I wouldn't say it's the most intersectional anthology of disability lit I've ever read (most of the authors seemed to be professors, or hold advanced degrees, though this *is* published by the New York Times so I guess that's to be expected), but the authors do explore multiple spheres of disabled identity in fascinating and profound ways. I hope the New York Times continues to publish their disability column because I always look forward to reading it!

P.S. Fuck Peter Singer. Read Andrew Solomon's Foreward if you want to know more, but I don't see how someone who passionately advocates for veganism and animal rights can also support murdering disabled newborns. Wtf, Peter.

[C.E. G · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Overall, I really liked the essays and the diversity of disabilities represented in the essays.

However, most of the essays weren't very intersectional. And a few were white/male in unexamined ways that felt like a problem, like the white(?) person with anxiety who had an anxiety attack about another airplane passenger in part because he texted in an "alphabet I don't recognize," and then didn't really acknowledge that impact/power that could have. Anxiety is so real as a disability, but white people's anxiety can be deadly to POCI, and it was troubling to see an example of that go completely unacknowledged. Additionally, a few of the male writers talking about dating also wrote in a way that felt laced with misogyny.

[Abby Johnson]

Excellent. This collection of essays written by people with disabilities for the Disability Series of the New York Times tackles a wide range of subjects from accessibility to dating in a wheelchair to worries about passing on a disability to children and so much more. This is an eye-opening and readable collection that should be required reading for all.

[Hallie Dumas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caring about people means listening to what they have to say, and About Us gives the platform to people with disabilities. Definitely covers heavy topics, but they’re really important ones. Would widely recommend :)

[Gabie (OwlEyesReviews) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super thought-provoking! I definitely feel super grateful to have come across this book.

[Magen - Inquiring Professional Dog Trainer · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded down because of how short each essay was

[Charlie - disableddaydreamer | itsbarbieparis (looking for mutuals) · Rating 4 out of 5]

a wonderful collection of disabled voices.

[Emma Ghiz]

This is truly something I think everybody should read. We need to understand other people’s perspectives and how they navigate life.

[Adam Lowy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of essays is a fascinating and profoundly important read. The essays are from a number of people who describe their experiences of living with disabilities. These span a number of conditions and speak to various complications of living. Specific problems related to legal issues, relationships, occupational stressors are covered. One of the wonderful aspects of this book is how it spans, not just different conditions, but more importantly the challenges of defining oneself, advocating for oneself, living, in a world that all too quickly wants to define people with a simplistic term. I was left with the powerful empathetic experience of the individual, that is defined as disabled. (One passage from the book describes how we are all disabled, to be later disabled, and had been disabled.)
I am in the health care field, and for the past few years, I have felt that everyone involved in health care should read Andrew Solomon's classic work, Far from the Tree. This work is different and I think "pairs well" with Solomon's. Rather than the more in depth narratives of family member's struggles with challenged children, this work focuses on a number of different challenges- some concrete , some more abstract- from the individual's perspective. At first, I thought that all involved in health care should read this as well but actually, all of us should read it. We are all not only differently-abled ourselves, but in need of understanding of those labeled as such.

Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to review this ARC.

[Nicole C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a virtual lecture I was fortunate to attend, Dr. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, one of this book's editors, stated a simple truth that has stayed with me: "Disability is everywhere once you know what to look for." Reading About Us, I learned a lot about disability—both as an umbrella term and in specific manifestations—and about disability pride, disability rights, and disability justice. I've begun to understand what to look for.

Perhaps more importantly, these stories have also helped me better understand how to look at disability. As a collection of personal essays written by people with disabilities, About Us emphasizes some of the most fundamental themes of human experience, which are used to structure the book into eight parts: Justice, Belonging, Working, Navigating, Coping, Love, Family, Joy. These essays center personhood over medical diagnosis; while they don't shy away from or diminish disability, they provide a more three-dimensional view of individuals with disabilities navigating day-to-day life. As Andrew Solomon writes in a powerful foreword:

Disabled lives are lives, and are charged with inherent dignity. Most people with disabilities don't wish they had never been born; most people with disabilities contribute to the world they inhabit; most people with disabilities both give more to and get more from life than their nondisabled peers may be inclined to guess. Some have rich lives despite their disability, but others would say they have rich lives at least in part because of their disability. Those arguments and the lives to which they pertain are the topic of this collection.

5/5 - Strongly recommended. A great book club pick.

A few essays I particularly liked, in order of appearance:
+ "Becoming Disabled" by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Justice)
+ "If You're in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives" by Luticha Doucette (Justice)
+ "My Medicaid, My Life" by Alice Wong (Justice)
+ "You are Special! Now Stop Being Different" by Jonathan Mooney (Justice)
+ "Should I Tell My Students I Have Depression?" by Abby L. Wilkerson (Working)
+ "We Are the Original Lifehackers" by Liz Jackson (Working)
+ "New York Has a Great Subway, If You're Not in a Wheelchair" by Sasha Blair-Goldensohn (Navigating)
+ "My Paralympic Blues" by Emily Rapp Black (Coping)
+ "The Three-Legged Dog Who Carried Me" by Laurie Clements Lambeth (Love)

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, honest book that The New York Times has compiled about living with disability. I found this to be a wonderful series of personal essays, mini memoirs that illustrate truths that folks with disabilities often have.

In a world full of ignorance and ableism, I do hope this is read by a wider audience that in many cases, disability often intersects with other facets that are linked to prejudice and cruelty, sometimes not intended, "many of the writers collected here live uneasily with medical conditions explicitly targeted for extermination in the past, and for elimination today" (xxvii).

Standouts include "Becoming Disabled" by Rosmarie Garland-Thomson, and "If You're in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives" by Luticha Doucette is how disability and race are often linked, and the unwelcome responses that able people give towards these women who want to be a part of spaces that they feel don't include them.

"My Medicaid My Life" by Alice Wong is a thought provoking piece about how the misconceptions of having medicaid is something that is not needed, because in a fraught political system, health care for most is something that many Americans feel that is not a necessary thing.

"Flying While Blind" by Georgina Kleege is a warm hearted essay about being blind and recounting moments where an able person does not recognize her need to sit somewhere comfortable and safe during an airplane ride, "I was vanishing from the conversation, this is a familiar experience for many disabled people and it can be risky" (Kleege 150).

For me, the most personal essay of them all is about transgender writer Eliot Kukla writing about living with lupus. His essay, "In My Chronic Illness, I Found a Deeper Meaning" is a soaring, heartbreakingly pragmatic essay which expresses both pain and gratitude. He writes at how people don't take him seriously because it is not visible. Of how expensive it is to get care, and the expenses used in proving he is ill, "the needs of my body were virtually irrelevant in this process as my diagnosis becomes a monetized affair" (Kukla 275). He has had to accept that his body is changing because of this monstrous disease, where he states, "I stopped trying to overcome my body and started living a present tense life in chronic illness." (276). He concludes by writing this line, "we are born needing care and die needing care" (276). I couldn't agree more.

[Ben Truong · Rating 5 out of 5]

About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times is an anthology of sixty-one essays, which was collected and edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. In this three score collection, disabled essayists reflect on love, joy, justice, community, and navigating daily challenges.

For the most part, I rather like most if not all of these contributions. About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times is an anthology of some sixty essays collected from the New York Times essay section dedicated to the disabled. Sixty-one essays from varying authors are divided into eight sections: Justice, Belonging, Working, Navigating, Coping, Love, Family, and Joy. It tackles issues of equality, tolerance, about visible and invisible disabilities, and just how a disabled person or people live from day to day in a world not designed for them.

Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions, but About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times may be the exception. It is far from perfect and some entries are more successful than others, but overall this is a solid and relevant anthology in which readers could identify and get a feeling of how the disable feel in certain situations.

All in all, About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times is a wonderful solid collection of essays about the joys and sadness about being disabled and how far humanity has come about caring for the disabled and how much more humanity can do.

[Seung · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ending, “I wish I could have convinced her that she wasn’t better off dead than disabled” is very powerful. My biggest issue about this book felt like it was “About Us” for them, rather than About Us for Us. But this doesn’t discount the fact that this is a very important book because of the voices of the contributors and their experiences. Topics of disability, neurodivergence and ex. Autism is now also under public scrutiny. For a lot of disabled people, this is an uncertain time and it is incredibly heavy and unfortunate that when disability is brought up in the public it is not for the benefit or through the voices of the disabled affected. By no means is disability monolithic but sometimes complex issues are heavily simplified as to be weaponized. There were a couple stories that stuck out to me like finding love that isn’t based on ableism. Or about how two wheelchair users became friends despite their vast socioeconomic differences. Or about the history of OXO and user design that is omitted, and about drawing medical conditions for study then having the same students interview people alive with that condition. My biggest issue with the book over a book like Disability Intimacy is that I want to hear about disabled voices celebrating the small wins, how to navigate towards community, how to survive burnout. Reading the book in a short span of time can be a lot though.

[Bruce Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one of the editors noted in an intro, the title About Us reflects the disability mandate of “nothing about us without us.” This is a compilation of voices of individuals with disabilities, each telling telling their personalized accounts of living: the good, the bad, the beautiful, and a bit of the ugly. The editors correctly stress that the writers are NOT a representative sample of people with disabilities, many of them being writers and other professionals — no more representative of PWDs than Americans generally. These are selections from a New York Times "Disability" column of which I had been unaware until I stumbled into this book. I believe the overly long introductions by the editors were unnecessary, but the essays that followed made the wait worth the delay.

[EB · Rating 3 out of 5]

You have to wade thru not one, not two, but THREE introductions before getting to the essays! I'm writing this midway thru the 3rd. My sense so far is that this book is less radical - more conciliatory - than Alice Wong's "Disability Visibility," which probably means it'll rankle more than uplift. We'll see!

The Forward (by Andrew Solomon) kind of hits all the high notes of disability justice arguments; it provides a serviceable summary of contemporary discourse around disabilities without digging deep in any one direction. It also presents a FAR rosier vision of the progress we've all (women, POC, queers, etc.) made against discrimination than *I've* ever experienced. As I read I kept thinking, "This must be written by a man b/c only men can afford to ignore/deny the violence and marginalization that's still happening (and effectively buttress the oppressive narrative of 'We've come so far! All's well!')." Yup.

The Preface (by Peter Catapano) felt more grounded in reality (it more accurately reflected/described my experience); therefore, it felt more accessible to me. He makes some questionable statements along the lines of, "We'll all be disabled eventually, so this is a book about all of us!" (again, pandering to the oppressive narrative by attempting to justify our worth, from a utilitarian perspective, to non-disableds) but overall a great relief to read on the heels of the Forward.

Observations at 59% of the way through:
* So many of the contributors are men! (Stories from the men are far less interesting to me.)
* It seems like every third contributor has cerebral palsy (both men and women).
* There are SO. MANY. references to Trump - either direct or oblique. That's the time when these essays were being published, so it makes sense. Still - it means they git dated very quickly.

There are too many quotes - I use up the character allotment for a review if I try to copy/paste them all here! I need to figure out how to include them somehow. In the meantime: overall this book was so-so. *In general* these writers are much less radical than the writers in Alice Wong's anthology (although there's def some overlap). I suppose in that sense it's a wider and therefore more accurate representation of the disabled experience - writers span from pollyannas and apologists to system dismantlers. There's also a wider range of ages and genders. This isn't a book I regret reading but it's not the first one I would reach for to educate either myself or someone else about the experience of disability.

Quotes I liked: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L58_...

[G Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t recommend this collection of essays enough. Our novels and poems, short stories and memoirs must better reflect everyone — not just those who can walk without assistance, talk with their voices (not their hands), read with their eyes (not their fingers), meet friends for dinner without weighing the experience against the likely panic attack that will ensue in the car on the way there, expect their gynecologist to support their pregnancy instead of questioning your ethics as a “disabled person,” make plans weeks in advance knowing you will likely feel well enough to follow through with them, etc.

[Kendall Concini · Rating 5 out of 5]

#readingchallenge2021 (my book centered around a topic I am passionate about)

A valuable read, in which the writers were very open & honest about their disability, in a way that shows the readers-you don’t really know how other people feel.

Working in the world of Intellectual Disabilities, as an Admissions Manager, as well as struggling with my own anxiety & depression, I felt this book hit close to home-highlighting insights into feelings, truths, and storytelling.

I loved the thematic separation of the eight categories- collectively showing whether the topic be justice, working, navigating, coping, loving, or joy- there is much humanity can do to reflect

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

These essays illustrate what Andrew Solomon articulates in his foreword: “Disabled lives are lives, and are charged with inherent dignity.” This is an excellent collection of essays written about disability by people with disabilities (the title of this book is a nod to the “nothing about us without us” mantra popular in disability rights communities). My only gripe is that the essays were almost all written by people with physical disabilities, and I would have appreciated reading essays from folks with intellectual disabilities.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me ages to get my hands on this, because three different german booksellers had difficulties delivering it, so I ended up buying it on amazon, what I try to avoid. But it does say a lot how hard it was to buy this book from other shops, which is sad but also enraging.

I originally wanted to read this for the Disability Read A Thon but didn't manage to finish it in time. Nevertheless I'm so glad I read it and I'm also happy that these essays used to be published in such a big paper as the NYT.

[Momily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this book enough. It details what life is like from multiple despectives, including from those with physical, cognitive, mental illness, and sensory diagnoses. The writers are also of all ages and really highlight how society's expectations and stigma are what make a person disabled. My only complaint is that there were not as many neurodivergent writers as I would have liked, but I would appreciate a second volume in a few years with even more of these essays. Definitely a great read.

[Sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I love about this book as a piece of art is the way in which it becomes an expression of the epitome of a "collection." Of course, I also just love reading about this stuff. The authors are different, the focus of each essay is different, and yet somehow it makes up a cohesive whole and it feels like everyone is in solidarity. It feels like listening to a chorus. It also falls just short of being radical for the same reason. No essay is particularly discordant or abrupt. The images are moving and important. This book will change people's lives, but it's subtle.

[Rachel Moyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great read! There were so many perspectives, and some of them were difficult to wrap my brain around. The book helped me to see disability not as a status of a person, but more as a condition that results from the way society/the physical world does or does not support people's disparate bodies. This book is a good counterweight to most of the messages we get about disability in society--the lives of disabled people are valuable not because they're able to "overcome" their disability, but because disabled lives are inherently valuable and add richness to the human experience.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I likely would not have read if I hadn't won an ARC, but I'm very glad I got a chance to read it. Like many anthologies, some of the essays were more engaging/accessible than others, but it was very interesting to read about how people have approached their various disabilities and how their conditions have affected them in both good and bad ways. It's given me a lot to think about!

[Bettendorf Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and many different stories & perspectives, well executed editing that features a lot of different folks. I enjoyed a large majority of the stories and wished some where longer. I'm glad this was put together! It has a lot of value to pass along to its readers.

A great collection of essays from people with disabilities. I've added tags for short stories and bio/memoirs because of the multiple essays and personal nature of them for myself to reference. -Ashley

[Kathryn White · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my 2024 quest to read everything I can find published by Rivers Solomon, I came across an essay of theirs that had been published in the NYTimes Disability Series—and then in this 2019 anthology.

The short essay “I Have Diabetes. Am I To Blame?” describes Solomon’s daily struggles (and longer term cycles) with managing their blood sugar. In a few pages, they convey how all-consuming this process is, how invisible it can be to others, and many of the ways outside forces impact their experience of the disease. It was eye opening.