Or if you are disabled.
Or if you’re a person with a disability.
Or if you are living with disability.
Or if you experience disability.
Or if you have lived experience of maybe sometimes possibly experiencing this thing in your life that we all must put lots of words in front of to make it as distant as possible that we maybe sometimes possibly in whispered voices refer to as disability.
Okay, I’m obviously getting a bit over the top with that last one (though it does sometimes feel that way). My point, though, is that no matter what language you use, you are welcome here and you might find resonance in my upcoming debut essay collection, INVISIBLE VIOLETS: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who my book is for. It’s going to publish in two months, and so my thinking has had to shift more outward now that all the proofing is done and it’s on its way out into the world. (Yay! And eeeeeeeek!)
The most prominent theme running through my book is disability. So, if you are a disabled reader (or any other particular phrasing that feels right to you), this book is for you.
Even though we all experience disability differently (even if we have the same disability), I hope my words will give you that “oh yes” and “she gets me” sense while reading, a sense I’ve experienced while reading authors who have disability in common with me.
I hope my words will give voice to internal and external dynamics in a way that articulates the specific struggles and joys of disabled life in a way that makes you feel seen and understood, as other books have done for me.
I hope reading my book lights a fire under the part of you that wants to write your own story, if you’re so inclined, because there are so few books about disability by disabled people out there and there’s room for so many more, and we need more.
Not every essay in my collection has disability as its central topic. Sometimes it’s a central theme, and other times it isn’t. Because that reflects reality. Sometimes it’s all-consuming, and other times it’s more like background noise.
Disability as a theme is most prominent in these essays:
Track 1: Invisible Violet: On Seeing and Not Seeing
Track 3: The Caduceus and the Muse
Track 5: Can’t Change Me: An Unnatural History of My Names
Track 6: Reasonable Doubt
Disability is present but more peripheral in these essays:
Track 2: Blue Alchemy
Track 4: August is a Burnt Burgundy-Violet Haze
Our experiences won’t be exactly the same. They might even be wildly different. Either way, I hope there are lines and paragraphs and passages and perhaps whole essays that harmonize with your experience and give you that sense of recognition that sometimes comes with reading.
~~~
For all the book details, check out the INVISIBLE VIOLETS page!
~Chrys
Image Description: an array of accessibility icons depicting people in wheelchairs, people using canes, people with guide dogs, pregnant people, people with small children, and some questions marks (which I believe represent less apparent disabilities).
Chrys Buckley 