Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
Sign in with Facebook
Disability studies / Disability theory
A list of books--primarily academic, non-fiction, anthologies, and memoirs--that take a political approach to disability, chronic illness, deafness, or madness. Special emphasis on those that address intersections with race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, or class.
Score
A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book.
| 1 |
|
The Cancer Journals
by
4.43 avg rating — 5,200 ratings
score: 474,
and
5 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 2 |
|
Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (Cultural Front Book 9)
by
3.99 avg rating — 438 ratings
score: 387,
and
4 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 3 |
|
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation
by
Eli Clare (Goodreads Author)
4.38 avg rating — 2,492 ratings
score: 376,
and
4 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 4 |
|
Feminist, Queer, Crip
by
4.39 avg rating — 1,012 ratings
score: 374,
and
4 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 5 |
|
The Disability Studies Reader
by
4.28 avg rating — 301 ratings
score: 280,
and
3 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 6 |
|
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
by
4.45 avg rating — 5,161 ratings
score: 271,
and
3 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 7 |
|
A Disability History of the United States
by
Kim E. Nielsen (Goodreads Author)
4.07 avg rating — 1,591 ratings
score: 254,
and
3 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 8 |
|
Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
by
Jennifer Bartlett (Editor)
4.14 avg rating — 253 ratings
score: 199,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 8 |
|
Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement
by
4.30 avg rating — 2,478 ratings
score: 199,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 10 |
|
Never Say Invisible: A Memoir of Living and Being Seen with ALS
by
Jeremy Schreiber (Goodreads Author)
4.51 avg rating — 164 ratings
score: 198,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 11 |
|
Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions (Forecaast; V. 21)
by
Christopher M. Bell (Editor)
4.09 avg rating — 35 ratings
score: 195,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 12 |
|
Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature
by
4.19 avg rating — 303 ratings
score: 191,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 13 |
|
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
by
4.25 avg rating — 1,858 ratings
score: 188,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 13 |
|
Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life
by
4.55 avg rating — 138 ratings
score: 188,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 15 |
|
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
by
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 7,469 ratings
score: 179,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 16 |
|
Trauma Queen
by
Luna Merbruja (Goodreads Author)
4.30 avg rating — 37 ratings
score: 176,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 17 |
|
Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic
by
4.40 avg rating — 35 ratings
score: 175,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 18 |
|
Feminist Disability Studies
by
Ellen Samuels (Contributor)
4.14 avg rating — 79 ratings
score: 173,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 19 |
|
Kindling
by
Aurora Levins Morales (Goodreads Author)
4.40 avg rating — 100 ratings
score: 165,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 20 |
|
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure
by
Eli Clare (Goodreads Author)
4.46 avg rating — 1,046 ratings
score: 164,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 21 |
|
Sounds Like Home: Growing Up Black and Deaf in the South
by
3.91 avg rating — 96 ratings
score: 163,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 22 |
|
Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness
by
4.39 avg rating — 38 ratings
score: 159,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 23 |
|
Disability Rights and Wrongs
by
3.86 avg rating — 43 ratings
score: 156,
and
2 people voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 24 |
|
Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity
by
4.01 avg rating — 161 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 24 |
|
Uprooted: An Anthology on Gender and Illness
by
4.35 avg rating — 23 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 24 |
|
Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience
by
Eileen Cronin (Goodreads Author)
3.81 avg rating — 657 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 24 |
|
Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation
by
4.56 avg rating — 686 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 24 |
|
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
by
Amanda Leduc (Goodreads Author)
4.07 avg rating — 5,831 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 24 |
|
AUTISM CAUSES UNVEILED: The Hidden Traumatic Brain Injury at Birth Causing the Autism Epidemic
by
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 16 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 30 |
|
Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada
by
Liat Ben-moshe (Editor)
4.45 avg rating — 74 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 30 |
|
Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum
by
3.79 avg rating — 188 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 32 |
|
In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America
by
Laurie Edwards (Goodreads Author)
3.49 avg rating — 434 ratings
score: 98,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 33 |
|
The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
by
4.16 avg rating — 621 ratings
score: 97,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 34 |
|
The Rejected Body (Interaction; 11)
by
4.26 avg rating — 168 ratings
score: 96,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 35 |
|
Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws
by
4.01 avg rating — 1,716 ratings
score: 94,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 36 |
|
Inbetweenland
by
Jacks McNamara (Goodreads Author)
4.64 avg rating — 22 ratings
score: 93,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 37 |
|
Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939
by
Natalia Molina (Goodreads Author)
4.09 avg rating — 115 ratings
score: 90,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 38 |
|
The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public
by
Susan Schweik (Goodreads Author)
3.88 avg rating — 168 ratings
score: 89,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 39 |
|
Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
by
4.28 avg rating — 619 ratings
score: 87,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 40 |
|
The Wellness Syndrome
by
Carl Cederström (Goodreads Author)
3.54 avg rating — 517 ratings
score: 86,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 41 |
|
Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (Biopolitics Book 18)
by
Jonathan M. Metzl (Editor)
3.75 avg rating — 155 ratings
score: 82,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 42 |
|
A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan
by
4.44 avg rating — 116 ratings
score: 81,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 43 |
|
Defiant
by
Michael Scott Monje Jr. (Goodreads Author)
4.39 avg rating — 28 ratings
score: 74,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 44 |
|
Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History
by
4.58 avg rating — 45 ratings
score: 73,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 45 |
|
Already Doing It: Intellectual Disability and Sexual Agency
by
4.30 avg rating — 27 ratings
score: 72,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 46 |
|
Criptiques
by
Caitlin Wood (Editor)
4.43 avg rating — 113 ratings
score: 71,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 47 |
|
When The Chant Comes
by
Kay Ulanday Barrett (Goodreads Author)
4.48 avg rating — 116 ratings
score: 68,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 48 |
|
All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism
by
4.55 avg rating — 127 ratings
score: 66,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 49 |
|
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race
by
4.22 avg rating — 996 ratings
score: 64,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 50 |
|
The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (The History of Disability, 3)
by
Susan Schweik (Goodreads Author)
3.88 avg rating — 168 ratings
score: 62,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
| 51 |
|
Depression: A Public Feeling
by
3.91 avg rating — 485 ratings
score: 60,
and
1 person voted
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
Related News
Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day, according to early...
Anyone can add books to this list.
How to Vote
To vote on existing books from the list, beside each book there is a link vote for this book clicking it will add that book to your votes.
To vote on books not in the list or books you couldn't find in the list, you can click on the tab add books to this list and then choose from your books, or simply search.
