BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

A disabled writer’s primer on the Disability Justice Movement.

When Blake was a baby, she was diagnosed with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, a condition so rare that her doctors only identified it after her mother found a telling photo in one of a series of medical books she was combing for answers about her newborn child. Partly as a result of her experiences related to this condition, the author proudly identifies as both disabled and politically aligned with the Disability Justice Movement. She begins by contrasting the medical and social models of disability, clarifying that the medical model treats disabled people as humans who need to be “fixed,” whereas the social model insists that we, as a society, ought to become less ableist and more open to “addressing deeper…systemic problems.” “In a nutshell,” Blake writes, “the social model argues that disabled people are more disabled by the society in which they live than by their bodies or their diagnoses.” Drawing from personal experience, the author describes the freedom she feels in her wheelchair (a freedom that no amount of physical therapy will ever grant her), the thrill of modeling “adaptive clothing at New York Fashion Week,” and how a series of selfies helped her resist white supremacist beauty standards and those who perpetuate them. In the final chapters, Blake connects ableism to the grief she experienced after her father’s untimely death. Throughout the book, the author is ebullient, humorous, and compassionate, balancing exuberant optimism and joie de vivre with crystal-clear convictions and a deeply critical eye. While most of the topics Blake covers will be familiar to those who have an interest in disability studies, her voice makes the text enjoyable and instructive. She ends with an epilogue entitled “Letters to My Seventeen-Year-Old Self.”

A frank and funny introduction to disability justice.