Showing titles in People with Disabilities

Robert Hoge was born with a giant tumour on his forehead, severely distorted facial features and legs that were twisted and useless. His mother refused to look at her son, let alone bring him home. But home he went, to a life that, against the odds, was filled with joy, optimism and boyhood...

Henry Markram is the Elon Musk of neuroscience, the man behind the billion-dollar Blue Brain Project to build a supercomputer model of the brain. He has set the goal of decoding all disturbances of the mind within a generation. This quest is personal for him. The driving force behind his grand ambition has been his son Kai, who has autism. Raising Kai made Henry Markram question all that he thought he knew about neuroscience, and then inspired his groundbreaking research that would upend the conventional wisdom about autism, expressed in his now-famous theory of Intense World Syndrome.

Almost 10 years after learning that her son is autistic, Julie Green was also diagnosed, shedding light on a lifetime of feeling othered and misunderstood. Motherness traces Julie's journey from childhood to early motherhood, when she must advocate for her son while navigating her own struggles. With more girls and women being diagnosed in the last decade—many of them later in life—the face of autism is changing. Motherness provides a rich, intensely personal account of what it is like to be autistic through the lens of both a mother and child.

A short, inspirational audiobook from Henry Fraser, a young quadriplegic motivational speaker and artist. Henry Fraser was a 17-year-old sports enthusiast and senior prefect when he broke his spinal cord and was left paralysed from the shoulders down. Life as he knew it was over, and yet, through extraordinary determination and a positive attitude, he has forged a successful career as an inspirational speaker and an artist.

Driven by the pursuit of perfection and the desire to truly be loved and accepted, Cynthia battled an eating disorder for thirteen long years. “Starving, Bingeing, Purging” is her raw, authentic story, told firsthand; a story not just of suffering, but of resilience, victory, and hope against all odds. In this book, Cynthia openly explores the complex issues of anorexia, bulimia, purging, and food addiction, and shares the intimate details of her journey to reclaim her life.

Just like fox, Heidi has lived on the outer. The ‘official record’ of her life has been her mental health record: primary diagnosis – schizoaffective; comorbidity – major depression, juvenile autism and not her own memories. This is the living, breathing version of Heidi’s mental health file that psych wards, doctors, mental health staff or rehab workers know little about or worse, use as evidence of diagnoses. This is Heidi’s account of what happened, shadowed by the story of a fox who knows he'll never belong.

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.

Thousands have been wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five have survived quadruple amputee injuries. This is one soldier's story. Thousands of soldiers die every year to defend their country. United States Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills was sure that he would become another...

In Sam Bloom, Sam tells her own story for the first time - how a shy but determined Australian girl became a nurse and travelled across Africa. How she fell in love with a like-minded free spirit, raised three boys and built a life together on Sydney's Northern Beaches. And then, in a single horrific moment, how everything changed.

This program is read by the author. Confessional and often hilarious, in Normal Sucks a neuro-diverse writer, advocate, and father meditates on his life, offering the radical message that we should stop trying to fix people and start empowering them to succeed. Jonathan Mooney blends anecdote...

How do you build a life when all that you know is changing? How do you conceive of love when you can no longer recognise those who mean the most to you? A phenomenal memoir, Somebody I Used to Know is both a heart-rending tribute to the woman Wendy Mitchell once was, and a brave affirmation of the woman dementia has seen her become.

In this raw, unflinching memoir about bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression) and psychosis, Mike McDonnell takes you inside the terrifying reality of losing your mind and the hard-fought journey back to sanity. Mental health crises affect millions, yet psychosis remains widely misunderstood and stigmatised. This memoir breaks through that silence with courage, humour, and hard-won wisdom.

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings...

Full of heart and tenderness, The House with All the Lights On provides an account of deafness in Australia and the UK, where Jessica's grandparents spent the first 60 years of their lives. She tells her grandparents' experience of growing up in a hearing world—one where sign language was banned for much of the 20th Century. Her quest to better understand them takes her to sign language classes, to the workplaces of research audiologists, and in the final chapters, she is led back to England where she visit their old schools and family landmarks.

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?

An inspiring true story of an athlete overcoming obstacles and unimaginable setbacks with resilience, faith, and the power of refusing to accept limits. Meet Mallory Weggemann: a Paralympic gold-medalist, world champion swimmer, ESPY winner, and NBC Sports commentator whose extraordinary story...

A heartfelt and inspiring memoir and celebration of Deaf culture by Nyle DiMarco, actor, producer, two-time reality show winner, and cultural icon of the international Deaf community Before becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair...

Read by the author. One of the most beloved Christian autobiographies of modern times, Joni highlights the unforgettable story of a young woman's courageous struggle to find hope after a broken neck left her completely paralyzed. On a hot July afternoon, Joni Eareckson Tada's life was...

"Beautiful and razor-sharp…cannot recommend highly enough." —Ann Helen Petersen, Culture Study "Cuts boldly and beautifully through that silence, inviting readers to imagine what our world might look like if we met every family where they are." —Vogue “A beautiful, transformative book...

Carly-Jay Metcalfe was born with cystic fibrosis, survived a double-lung transplant at the age of 21 and faced a rare cancer at the age of 30. What she has endured should have killed her, but her humour, courage and optimism became her best survival skills. From her hospitalised childhood to her many friendships, loves and losses, Metcalfe shares the fickle nature of life with candour and warmth. She writes with compelling insight about organ donation, opioid addiction and survivor's guilt, while still managing to find joy amongst the wreckage.