Helpmeet / Naben Ruthnum / 2022

Helpmeet / Naben Ruthnum / 2022

What an incredible feat of feminist and disability horror.  We follow a wife as she cares for her diseased and dying husband. The disease is mysterious and horrifying as it dries out portions of his body until they crumble off. Less than 20 pages deep a nose and penis crumble off so be ready for some terrifying body horror.  The richly emotional narrative spins off troubling questions about gender and caretaking, love and betrayals, and the ending is such a shocking and stirring reveal that had Anushka and I debating its implications passionately.  I was swept away and stunned. This is why I read horror.   5/5

When She Woke, She Was An Open Field / Hilary Brown / 2017

When She Woke, She Was An Open Field / Hilary Brown / 2017

There's a surprising amount of 5/5 poems in this short chapbook by a disabled poet with ties to Utah. These short pugilistic poems will knock you out with one stanza by bearing testimony to the sometimes agonizing experience of disability. There's a blurb by Natalie Diaz and having met this poet, I'd add their presence carries a gravitas as sharp and heavy as their verse.

4/5

eing Seen: A Deaf Blind Women's Fight to End Ableism / Elsa Sjunneson / 2021

Being Seen: A Deaf Blind Women's Fight to End Ableism / Elsa Sjunneson / 2021

I'm deeply grateful Melissa recommended this book to me. I am skeptical of memoirs that narrate the trauma of [insert historically marginalized group] and argue for representation in an overly sentimental fashion. Maybe I felt burned by the asexual book I read. This book was radically different, extremely insightful, and managed to make the expected arguments for representation with much greater stakes than usual. Elsa dives between memoir, historical essays, media studies analyses with a choppy step perhaps. Chapters proceed somewhat haphazardly and the organization seems a little smorgasbord rather than building in the cleanest way. However, this barely weakens the tremendous insights of Being Seen. Elsa's blunt and at times bitter narration is also extremely determined and painfully kind. I'm incredibly grateful Sjunneson is helping those of us newer to accessibility catch up and I'll be seeking more disabled literature in this mode, hoping to keep breaking down my inherited ableism and find new worlds of imagination in literature and art, as well as care work strategies and ethos. 4.5/5