Sign in Subscribe
4 min read

Disability Intimacy

Disability Intimacy
Light beige background with a red flower on top, green leaves on both sides, underneath that flower is a purple one and right next to the purple is an orange flower. Under the purple and orange flowers are stems. Overlaid on top of the flowers in black bold letters: Disability Intimacy Essays on Love, Care, and Desire Edited by Alice Wong, Editor of Disability Visibility

This has been a pretty exciting and busy year for me full of lots of life changes such as moving into my first place, adopting two cats, Bert and Ernie, co-editing Low and Slow, a series of food writing by disabled people in partnership with Eater, publishing several guest essays for the Disability Visibility Project, and having a few other secret hijinks. A source of joy has been this newsletter and being able to offer over 25 book giveaways to you all, dear subscribers.

For the last 2 years I've been editing my second anthology which has been a labor of love, Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, which will be available from Vintage Books on April 30, 2024. It’s been such a pleasure working with these amazing disabled contributors (full list below).

Whether you celebrate the holidays this winter or not, I hope you will consider pre-ordering this book. I'm biased but I believe this is an incredible collection of works by disabled writers on intimacy. And it makes a great gift!

I look forward to continuing this newsletter in 2024 and want to thank all of you for your support. Onward and upward!

Light beige background with a red flower on top, green leaves on both sides, underneath that flower is a purple one and right next to the purple is an orange flower. Under the purple and orange flowers are stems. Overlaid on top of the flowers in black bold letters: Disability Intimacy Essays on Love, Care, and Desire Edited by Alice Wong, Editor of Disability Visibility. Designed by Madeline Partner

Kirkus Reviews

The book, which the author organizes partially around the central value of “tenderness,” delves into topics such as love, creativity, care, and power, all while treating intimacy as a vast and multifaceted concept that can be applied to individuals just as easily as collectives. The contributions include a photo essay about care work, a poem about kissing, and a hybrid essay about “Bondage, Domination / Discipline, Service / Submission, Sadism and Masochism,” also known as BDSM. Alongside these formally inventive approaches, other writers examine nontraditional subjects of intimacy, including, among others, a disabled pet and “a contraption called a Milwaukee back brace.” Just like Wong’s introduction, which includes both a confession about her romantic history and a gloriously poetic description of her sexual desire, most contributions are intensely confessional, inviting readers into the writers’ lives with radical, compassionate love and encouraging them to rethink their traditional views of everything from sex to love to care…A poignant anthology about ability and intimacy that espouses a gorgeously original worldview.

About the book

The much-anticipated follow up to the groundbreaking anthology Disability Visibility: another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its myriad forms.

What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm. 

But don’t worry: there’s still sex to consider—and the numerous ways sexual liberation intersects with disability justice. Plunge between these pages and you’ll also find disabled sexual discovery, disabled love stories, and disabled joy. These twenty-five stunning original pieces—plus other modern classics on the subject, all carefully curated by acclaimed activist Alice Wong—include essays, photo essays, poetry, drama, and erotica: a full spectrum of the dreams, fantasies, and deeply personal realities of a wide range of beautiful bodies and minds. Disability Intimacy will free your thinking, invigorate your spirit, and delight your desires.
Digital portrait by Jen White-Johnson. An Asian American woman with a tracheostomy and a tube attached to her throat in a wheelchair. She is wearing a bright red lip color and a blue cardigan. On the left is her cat Bert, a brown tabby, and to her right is Ernie, an orange cat. Behind them is a pink background with a round halo effect behind Alice. There are curly stylized red and orange clouds in the background.

About the editor

Alice Wong is a disabled activist, media maker, and research consultant based in San Francisco, California. She is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture. Alice is also the host and co-producer of the Disability Visibility podcast and co-partner in a number of collaborations such as #CripTheVote and Access Is Love. From 2013 to 2015, Alice served as a member of the National Council on Disability, an appointment by President Barack Obama. For more: disabilityvisibilityproject.com.

Contributors

Ashna Ali

Moya Bailey

Gracen Brilmyer

Pelenakeke Brown

John Lee Clark

Marie E. S. Flores

Tee Franklin

Emilie L. Gossiaux

Ryan J. Haddad

Aimi Hamraie

Ada Hubrig

Melissa Hung

Cyrée Jarelle Johnson

Elliot Kukla

Travis Chi Wing Lau

Mia Mingus

Marieke Nijkamp

Claude Olson

Naomi Ortiz

Jade T. Perry

Gabrielle Peters

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Khadijah Queen

The Redwoods

Ellen Samuels

Sami Schalk

Nicole Lee Schroeder 

Sejal A. Shah

Ashley Shew

s.e. smith 

Ingrid Tischer

Maria Town

Jaipreet Virdi

Ashley Volion and Akemi Nishida

Carrie Wade

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware

Robin Wilson-Beattie

Yomi Sachiko Wrong 

Sarah A. Young Bear-Brown

If you want to support my work, smash this button!
Subscribe for free!

Published by:

Alice Wong

Member discussion