Identifying Ability Diverse Titles for Adults

On my recent travels I was asked a very good questions by a library worker [paraphrased]:

I am trying to make lists of books that feature characters with disabilities but every time I try to do searches for these books I feel icky, like I am doing fetish searches. How can I identify these titles easier and what controlled language should I use?"

I have also been asked this question in different ways where people have asked me about what is included in the term "disabled."

Let's start with that language question. The least ableist term that has been standardized by NoveList as a search term in their database is "ability diverse." This allows for physical and neural "disabilities" to be considered together. The term "disabilities" is not preferred because of its inherent othering of those who are not "abled."

Ability diverse recognizes that there is a spectrum of how humans live physically and mentally.

There is also an argument for including protagonists with "chronic illness" in the ability diverse conversation. As someone whose only ability diverse issue is that I need glasses to survive [arguably the most normalized "disability], I defer to others on what should be included. My privilege is not trustworthy here. But again, in Novelist, you can search by "Chronic Disease" Whether or not you agree about including chronic illness in the ability diverse umbrella, it is important to recognize both as experiences that are marginalized in our literature and, especially, its promotion

As usual, the children's sphere of librarianship is ahead of the curve in helping library workers identify the very best of these titles for kids and teens with the Schneider Family Book Award:

Schneider Family Book Award

About the Schneider Family Book Award The Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.
Click here for the Schneider Family Book Award Manual (PDF)
Bibliography of Children's Books about the Disability Experience (pdf)

But in the adult world we don't have anything more than keyword searches in NoveList and Google [although in this case you have to search specific disabilities if you want to find titles, which again feels wrong] and some limited book lists starting to be created by our peers [links coming].

However, yesterday, Book Riot alerted me to a possible new resource-- The Berbellion Prize. From the excellent article about the prize which includes some analysis on its possible limitations:

The Berbellion Prize is a new award for an author whose “work has best spoken of the experience of chronic illness and/or disability.” It will be awarded for the first time in February 2021 for a book published in 2020, with a cash prize of £600. The judges have yet to be determined. Jake Goldsmith, the author of the disability memoir Neither Weak Nor Obtuse, started the award to promote disabled voices, which so often go unheard. The prize is named after W.N.P. Barbellion, whose diary The Journal of a Disappointed Man, published in 1919, chronicles his life with multiple sclerosis.

Author of the article, Margaret Kingsbury goes on to discuss the proposed award and the literary landscape for ability diverse woks in general. Please click through and read her piece.

Book Riot has also included this list at the end of the article:

If you’re looking for more books with disability representation, check out these lists: 

• Read Harder: A Book With a Main Character or Protagonist With a Disability

• 6 Powerful Books By Disabled Authors

• 20 Must-Read YA Books with Disabled Characters

• The Alienating Lack of Disability Representation in Literature

• 2020 YA Book Covers Bring Disability Representation to the Forefront

• I Opened The Door: On Portals, Fantasy, And My Disability

This is yet another area where our patrons' representation is not reflected in our collections, book lists, and displays. Kingsbury also links to the CDC's page illustrating how disability impacts American citizens. The numbers are staggering; however, I suspect they are not inclusive of all "disabilities," so the number is probably much higher than 61 million affected.

There are many people in every community, your community, your neighborhood that would love to see representations of any ability diverse experiences in your collections, displays, and suggest reading lists. But we cannot simply put these titles on display together. They are not a genre! It is a frame, the experience of a character, but these books encompass every genre. And, genre appeal factors will be the largest deciding element, for most readers, as to whether or not they would enjoy the book.

Instead, we need to have lists and include keywords in our catalogs to allow for discovery but also, we need to normalize all experiences by including all voices in every display. Find a way to include books like these in your displays, displays that aren't only about the ability of the protagonist.

And finally, we need to work together to crowd source books for all readers, titles that represent the experience of all humans across the world, not only the white, heterosexual, abled bodied ones. Make lists and share them far and wide. Make them easy to find with a Google search using terms like "ability diverse." We can help more readers together than going at it alone.