Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Colker, Ruth

English

Toward Universal Design in the Classroom

Morgan, Jamelia N.

Why Disability Studies in Criminal Law and Procedure?

Bezanson Shultz, Melissa

Professor, Please Help Me Pass the Bar Exam #NextGenBar2026

Rodríguez-Roldán, Victoria M.

186
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 71, Number 1 (Fall 2021)
Book Review
Alice Wong, (ed.), Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First 
Century, New York, N.Y.: Vintage Books, 2020, pp.309, $16.95 (paperback)  
 
Reviewed by Victoria M. Rodríguez-Roldán
Alice Wong is one of the nation’s foremost disability advocates. Among 
her achievements are the development of the Disability Visibility Project 
and the creation of the popular hashtag #CripTheVote on Twitter. She has 
now edited two anthologies, the first one being Resistance and Hope: Essays 
from Disabled People. Her second anthology is the subject of this book review, 
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century.1 In it, she offers 
something frequently absent from how we discuss disability: voices from 
disabled people themselves. By definition, anyone who does this (with the 
masterful choice of authors that Wong makes) is doing something refreshing 
and even revolutionary. All in all, Wong gives us an essay-based recounting 
of the past of the early disability justice movement, as well as many examples 
of disabled life in the current moment.
The collection offers a broad range of disabled perspective, but it is 
thoughtfully and intentionally edited. The book is divided into four sections: 
being, belonging, doing, and connecting. Taken together, they are the stages 
of building a disabled community from the inside of a person outward to the 
networks they organize.
Wong is emphatic about telling the story of a disabled community outside 
the mainstream narrative of disability. An issue that lives at the core of 
Wong’s editing of the anthology is that she comes to it with a vision focused 
on disability justice and not disability rights. The “rights” perspective, which 
is older, focuses on the idea that the movement is just about securing legal 
rights for our community and, in the eyes of justice activists, fails to articulate 
how systemic oppression has led to injustices that exist beyond the basic laws. 
Disability justice, by contrast, acknowledges the intersection of marginalized 
identities within the disability community and how they work together to keep 
those with multiple marginalized identities oppressed and at the margins of 
1 Disability Visibility: First-Person stories From the twenty-First Century (Alice 
Wong ed., 2020).
Victoria M. Rodriguez-Roldán J.D., University of Maine School of Law, B.A. University of 
Puerto Rico. Currently Senior Policy Manager at AIDS United, Washington, D.C.
187Book Review: Disability Visibility
society.2 Its goal is not legal but liberatory, and it insists that the liberation of 
disabled people is inextricably intertwined with an end to racism, capitalism 
and other forms of oppression.
In my personal experience as a neurodiverse trans woman of color, the 
disability movement can be extremely pale, stale and male. Far too often 
organizations and efforts are led by white men, who continue to rest on 
achievements from the prior century and have not given space for newer 
voices to hold positions of leadership. Therefore, one of the first things to 
strike me about this anthology is the diversity of the authors. Jen Deerinwater, 
an Indigenous chronically ill activist, speaks from their perspective as to 
how being Indigenous has affected the ableism they experience and the 
intersection between the genocide of Indigenous peoples and ableism. TL, a 
deaf/hard-of-hearing and autistic activist who specializes in prison abolition, 
narrates their experience with what grief and remembrance look like when you 
live at the margins that society relegates us to as disabled people. Maysoon 
Zayid, known for her comedy and art, tells us about her lived experience as a 
Muslim disabled person with cerebral palsy. All in all, it is a list of diverse and 
accomplished and amazing activists, and it doesn’t rely on the “same old-same 
old” usual list of suspects that is frequent in books and events about disability.3 
An additional common thread that unites all the narratives told in the book 
is that they portray the complexity of the human experience without engaging 
in any form of self-pity. Indeed, as self-advocates we eschew the idea of being 
seen as objects of pity, but rather insist on being recognized as full-fledged 
humans who enjoy and are capable of great lives. As the stories portray, the 
only thing “wrong” about having a disability is society’s ableism and lack of 
accessibility and opportunity for disabled people. 
This lack of self-pity is such a strong through-line that some unfamiliar with 
disability could well come out with the wrong idea: The stories that portray 
resilience and refusing to go quietly into the good night may be misread as 
what the activist Stella Young termed “inspiration porn,” a kind of feel-good 
story of disabled success, produced mostly for the benefit of an able-bodied 
audience. As an activist and colleague to many of these authors myself, I would 
say that this impression couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, the essays 
show the way that activists have been fighting ableism their whole lives, since 
well before they even considered themselves activists. If these stories inspire 
2 See What is Disability Justice?, sins inValiD (June 16, 2020), https://www.sinsinvalid.org/news-
1/2020/6/16/what-is-disability-justice (offering the following tenets of “[a] disability justice 
framework”: “[a]ll bodies are unique and essential”; “[a]ll bodies have strengths and needs 
that must be met”; “[w]e are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but 
because of them”: “[a]ll bodies are confined by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation 
state, religion, and more, and we cannot separate them”); Talila “T.L.” Lewis, Disability Justice 
Is an Essential Part of Abolishing Police and Prisons, leVel (Oct. 7, 2020), https://level.medium.
com/disability-justice-is-an-essential-part-of-abolishing-police-and-prisons-2b4a019b5730.
3 Carrie Basas, Disability Rights So White: Disability and Racial Justice, Fakequity (Mar. 8, 2018), 
https://fakequity.com/2018/03/08/disability-rights-so-white-disability-and-racial-justice/ 
(on the topic of racism and whiteness in disability rights organizations). 
188 Journal of Legal Education
readers, it cannot be because they show disabled people triumphing over their 
disabilities and happily winning the privileges of the nondisabled, but instead 
because the disabled authors make clear their right to exist in the world as 
themselves, without having to change the essence of who they are for a world 
that insists on defining them against their will. 
The essay with which Wong chose to lead the volume beautifully 
encapsulates these themes: The late Harriet McBryde Johnson, a well-known 
disability rights attorney from South Carolina who had a neuromuscular 
disability, discusses her conversations and debates with the moral philosopher 
Peter Singer of Princeton University. Within the disability community, Singer 
is well known for advocating that parents should have the option to kill 
disabled children when they’re babies. His logic even extends to elderly people 
whose minds have ceased to properly “function” (at least by abled people’s 
standards). In Singer’s ideal world, someone with the physical disabilities that 
Johnson had would have been killed as a child. The disabled should not exist, 
according to him.4 
Johnson describes how, despite Singer’s advocacy that effectively says she’s 
better off dead and has no place in the world, he turns out to be perfectly 
capable of having an ongoing friendly debate about the topic while treating 
her politely.5 This creates significant cognitive dissonance for her, as well as the 
broader disabled community she is a part of back home. Memorably, she tells 
us that a friend of hers compared Singer to how Nazi SS officers would often 
be doting fathers or loving husbands.6 That relationship with Peter Singer 
in many ways captures both the banality of evil (to borrow from Hannah 
Arendt, who coined the term to explain the Nazis who could otherwise be 
“good people” but still guilty of genocide)7 of eugenics and ableism and the 
emotional sacrifices disability activists often have to make. 
 Here, Johnson’s essay resonated with me, and I’m sure resonated with many 
disability justice activists. We often realize from painful experience that ableist 
people never hate you or me in particular or want you or me dead specifically, 
but instead “those” nameless “other” people. As I have frequently been told 
when discussing society’s hatred of people with psychiatric disabilities such 
as myself, they see me as one of the “good ones” who takes her meds and is 
presentable in society. This cognitive dissonance is similar to that seen in other 
4 A deeper critique of both Singer’s stances and Johnson’s work can be found in 
Johnson’s memoir, Too Late To Die Young. harriet mCbryDe Johnson, too late to 
Die young: nearly true tales From a liFe (2005). The debates with Singer were 
also the subject of a play titled The Thrill, from 2013. See Donal O’Connor, Strength 
of Judith Thompson’s new play The Thrill is asking provocative, complex questions, The beaCon 
heralD (Aug. 14, 2003), https://www.stratfordbeaconherald.com/2013/08/14/
strength-of-judith-thompsons-new-play-the-thrill-is-asking-provocative-complex-questions.
5 Disability Visibility, supra note 1, at 3.
6 Id. at 23.
7 hannah arenDt, eiChmann in Jerusalem: a rePort on the banality oF eVil (1963).
189Book Review: Disability Visibility
types of prejudice. For example, the person who hates LGBTQ people will 
just as gleefully excuse mentally the lesbian cousin who gets him Christmas 
presents as not meaning her, just the ones who flaunt identity. The racist will 
try to justify police profiling of Black people at the same time as he has Black 
co-workers with whom he loves having lunch and of whom he thinks highly. 
That cognitive dissonance is the one of which Johnson is on the receiving end 
during her debates with Singer. 
Ultimately, what Johnson shows in the essay is how easy it was for Singer 
to debate intellectually whether people like Johnson should get to exist when 
it’s not his life at stake. To him, it is just a theory and the intellectual discourse 
is stimulating and fun. To those of us who end up dead or institutionalized 
when his views are turned into culture and policy, it is a terrifying matter of life 
and death. The emotional sacrifice that we frequently have to make as activists 
and members of marginalized communities is to be forced to debate our own 
existence and lives with people who hold power but for whom it is just an 
abstract intellectual exercise. Although Johnson passed away in 2008, her 
experience with people like Peter Singer is one that resonates deeply with me 
and that reminds me of many debates and discussions I’ve had. It particularly 
brings back memories of lobbying with congressional staffers against the 
curtailing of civil liberties of the mentally ill, and the ability with which they 
were able to debate whether people with mental health disabilities such as 
myself should be forced into treatment or be at the mercy of others. For me, a 
disabled person with bipolar disorder, it means a major difference in quality of 
life. For them it is an abstract issue to debate, which has no impact on them. 
By making concrete the realities of multiple disabled experiences, Wong, like 
Johnson, deprives the reader of an abstract version of disability and forces 
them to contend with the real impacts of ableism.
Another essay that left a powerful impact on me was Maysoon Zayid’s 
work on her experiences with being a religious Muslim, and her relationship 
to Islam as someone with multiple disabilities.8 For example, in Ramadan it 
is customary for Muslims to fast during the daytime. However, people who 
for health reasons cannot do so are exempted from the rule. Notwithstanding 
this exemption, Zayid fasted during the holy month for the first few years 
of her adulthood, despite its being so much harder for her, until eventually 
she was unable to do so. This experience, which helped her be more proud 
and embracing of her disability and her religious beliefs, resonated with me 
because of my own Judaism, and the memories of my father not fasting during 
Yom Kippur because of his own health issues, and the example that set out 
for me. In Judaism, at least, the logic behind exempting those who cannot 
fast from the commandment is that you shall live by the commandments, and 
not die by them—the preservation of life is more important. Seeing this similar 
experience in another religious tradition was special for me and, once again, 
showed the intersection of disability with other facets of identity.
8 Disability Visibility, supra note 1, at 36.
190 Journal of Legal Education
There are many other essays throughout the book, more than this review 
can adequately cover. The collection contains Talia Lewis’s eulogy to their 
partner, Ki’tay D. Davidson, a 22-year-old disability activist who in Lewis’s 
words was a great activist and a dear loved one.9 This essay, which is so 
heartfelt it moved me to tears, weaves social justice and disability liberation 
with mourning and grief. 
One resonant idea from this segment is this, on “Ki’tay’s ability to sit 
with and actively love oppressors and those who were violent toward him and 
marginalized communities—most often solely because they do not adhere to 
that which has been deemed ‘normal.’” This “truly set him apart.” “He could 
breathe life and love into even those people within mere moments of making 
their acquaintance. This is what makes him special—reminiscent of what some 
here may call a prophet; others, a wise man; others still, a light or sage.” This 
ability to love all and breathe life into the world makes me wish I had met 
Ki’tay and sets him as an example for all of us to follow. 
Other essays that will likely resonate with many readers include Keshia 
Scott’s piece on embracing asexuality as a disabled person.10 This one is 
essential for anyone who works with disability, because our society so often 
refuses to sexualize or acknowledge that the disabled usually have a sexual 
identity. It will also be resonant for those who fall within the LGBTQ 
umbrella, as asexuality is frequently erased even within queerness. There are 
parallels between how asexuality and disability are perceived: Both are seen 
by many through the lens of there being a “problem” or something “wrong” 
with the person. 
Jessica Slice’s experience as a parent with a disability is another obligatory 
read because of another stereotypical image that society often has of people 
with disabilities: that their disabilities mean that they couldn’t be good 
parents. Disabled people often have to fight for the right to have and raise 
their children, and those of us with intellectual, developmental and mental 
health disabilities still face calls for sterilization and guardianship. Slice’s 
essay challenges that perception with firsthand accounts of her experience. 
For similar reasons, I enjoyed the essay on the isolation of being deaf in 
prison, by Jeremy Woody as told to Christie Thompson.11 By including this 
viewpoint, a poignant story of isolation and suffering, Wong centers directly the 
most marginalized and least popular within our community: the incarcerated. 
The story of mass incarceration in the past few decades, particularly as it 
affects marginalized minorities, is a uniquely American story that is essential 
to understanding our darker instincts as a nation. This essay makes sure we 
don’t forget that when discussing disability. 
9 Id. at 28.
10 Id. at 121.
11 Id. at 59.
191Book Review: Disability Visibility
Another favorite of mine is the essay by Jen Deerinwater, who writes on the 
experiences of chronically ill and disabled Indigenous people in America.12 
They discuss their own experience of growing up disabled and Indigenous 
in Oklahoma and their objections to the term “Native American,” as well as 
their experience of anti-native racism in the healthcare system, often being 
addressed with slurs or asked invasive questions about their ethnicity while in 
hospitals. They also discuss in-depth the service of the Indian Health Service, 
in their words rated as “the worst healthcare provider in America,” with an 
allocation of funding of less than $1,300 per person served. There is a reason 
the essay is called “The Erasure of Indigenous People in Chronic Illness.” 
In addition to personal essays, the volume also contains manifestoes 
and political essays about contemporary issues of concern to the disabled 
community. Rebecca Cokley discusses abortion and how access to it is a crucial 
disability justice issue.13 The Harriet Tubman Collective’s essay describes their 
organization’s vision for Black lives.14 New Yorkers and those familiar with 
one of my favorite cities will also enjoy Britney Wilson’s essay on the fight for 
access and dignity in the New York City’s Paratransit system, and the famously 
inaccessible subway system.15
It is almost impossible to fully write on the scope of the book, because 
the essays and their authors are so diverse. Wong successfully captured, in 
the course of her anthology, the true breadth and multifaceted diversity of 
the disability community and brought it to light in a single, easily readable 
volume. All in all, when I put down the Kindle after finishing Disability Visibility. 
I felt that I had read a special book. When the next generations of historians 
are researching what this movement did during this day and age, this book 
will be as much a must-read as it is now. 
To conclude, I’d say that this book is also an essential read for the legal 
profession, such as lawyers, attorneys, law students, judges, and professors. In 
our profession, it is essential that we center the most marginalized among us 
and understand the full breadth of who comprises the people whose rights we 
are supposed to protect and guard. This includes the disability community. 
12 Id. at 47.
13 Id. at 159.
14 Id. at 236. 
15 Id. at 205.


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