Eden’s Reading Corner – Must Read Books on Disability, Autism, and Mental Health

Do you like reading? Or maybe you don’t—but you want to get better at it? Same here. I’m kind of a mix of both! I enjoy reading in small bursts, but staying focused on a book for long periods? That’s a whole other story. Maybe it’s an attention thing, maybe it’s executive dysfunction, or maybe I’m secretly ADHD (spoiler: I’m not).

That said, here are some books I’ve actually finished and enjoyed. I hope you find something in here that speaks to you too.

Foundational & Advocacy

• Neuroqueer Heresies – Nick Walker

• Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally – Emily Ladau

• A Disability History of the United States – Kim E. Nielsen

Memoirs & Lived Experience

• Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir – Terry Galloway

• Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression – Nana-Ama Danquah

• The Cancer Journals – Audre Lorde

• All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship – Jennifer Natalya Fink

Neurodivergence & Mental Health

• The Collected Schizophrenias – Esmé Weijun Wang

• Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity – Devon Price

• Self–Care for Autistic People – Megan Anna Neff

Cultural & Collective

• Disability Visibility – Edited by Alice Wong

• Loving Our Own Bones – Julia Watts Belser

Book I'm Reading Currently

• Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body – Rebekah Taussig

My Reading Wishlist

Books i’m planning to read or looking forward to:

• What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew – Autism Women’s Network

• We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation – Eric Garcia

• Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism – Elsa Sjunneson

• Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness – Remi Yergeau

• Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist – Judy Heumann

• My Brain is Different: Stories of ADHD and Other Developmental Disorders – Monzusu. I will note that this is a manga essay anthology if that is something that interest you!
  

Thoughts?

I’ll be updating this blog over time as I keep reading and discovering new titles. What do you think of this selection? Do you have any book recommendations? Feel free to send them my way—I’d love to check them out!