I cannot talk about illness and how it affects me, without mentioning how it is tied to my immigration status, or my
choices and access as a queer upper class woman. The axes of benefits and struggles at which I find myself leads to a particular set of options. From there, I make choices. There, I live daily.
— Nitika Raj, The Wholeness Project
Instead of honoring difference, we are asked to assimilate. Supposedly, this is to help us but it only inevitably erases who we are and diminishes the experiences we face.
— Kay Ulunday Barrett, Constant Dissonance: Our Noise is Dangerous
Criptiques is a collection of essays and stories that challenges ideas of what it means to be disabled without ever erasing the true, beautiful, frustrating, painful, uplifting realities disability brings into our lives. Disabled people ar so often seen as one-dimensional human beings; defined by the pain we’re in, or the limmits we have, or the beliefs of the people who look at us. This book, written entirely by disabled people, moves past that narrative of being observed, past the how-tos, the statistics (though there are plenty of those, into what the people behind those statistics actually look like, feel, do, and experience each day.
Who are the people of Criptiques? They are artists, scholars, musicians, activists, deep thinkers, sexual beings, mothers, lovers.
What does it mean to be “criptical?” It means equl footing and value between Stefanie Hillary’s academic piece on frida Kahlo, art history, and disability, and Leroy Moore’s provocative Droolilicious, a Krip-Hop piece.
It means exploring the usual disability-related topics in unusual ways. Danine Spencer lays out the grim unemployment statistics for women with disabilities in the United States alongside her own struggle with physically not being able to meet today’s demanding work environments. Bethany Stevens shares the many ways her former workplace, a disability policy research department, was inaccessible and unwelcoming. In What Should you call me?, Emily Ladau, who has been disabled all her life, shares that nondisabled disability advocates have questioned the sincerity of her advocacy based on her objections to using person-first language.
Being criptical means introducing the unexpected.
In most disability anthologies, we’d expect to see at least one piece on the miracles of technology. Instead, Eva Sweeney tells us how and why, for her, using a simple alphabet board makes communication faster and easier than it would be with a computerized communication device.
We hear about sexuality: From Elsa henry, possibly the only blind burlesque dancer in the world. From Jen Rinaldi and Samantha Walsh, who explore the ways their experiences as young disabled women were affected by the assumptions that all young women start dating men. From Alissa Hillary, who shows us how autistic people’s sexuality is erased. From Leroy Moore, who shares how his drooling, a part of his disability he was always told to control, is exciting and sexy to an intimate partner.
Criptiques makes its readers wake up and see the world differently. or me, that “aha” moment happened while reading Ben G.’s On Radicl Empathy and Schizophrenia: “To say that those years of my
life correspond to a brain problem and nothing more, is to … reduce my own experience of myself, and at worst, to rob me of the experience altogether.”
There is more in this book, on our collective fears of aging and death, on body image and beauty standards, on parenting, as a disabled person, on (usually unpleasant) encounters with the medical system.
Criptiques should be required reading in most university classes. It’s hard-hitting and funny, sad and rhetorical. It’s the kind of book I could – and have – read many times and still learn something new or still feel the flutter of my heart opening in joy and admiration for these writers.
And I don’t just want to se this book on the shelves of Disability Studies students. This needs to be part of the curricula for many disciplines: gender studies, American Studies, occupational therapy, pre-med, nursing, social work, and more. Instead of teaching disability as a separate subject, Criptiques would allow professors to teach common topics like anti-racism, body image, medical and legal concerns, etc. starting from a disability or criptical perspective.
A life-changing book for anyone who reads it.
You can purchase a paper copy of Criptiques here.
Or download a free, PDF copy here.