2025: Book about any/some/all: disability, mental health, neurodivergence, healing
Book recommendations/suggestions for the Read, Seed, Water, Feed 2025 book challenge. Find your next book!
read, seed, water, feed book challenge - about prompt support posts
about prompt support posts
All of the prompt support posts (those that begin with "2025: Book written by...", for example) are organized similar to each other.
Each of these posts was created to support the Read, Seed, Water Feed book challenge on Storygraph that I am hosting. They were also created to support learning outside of the university, collective educational efforts, finding new authors to read, finding books, and more.
For each book challenge prompt, I will share the following sections:
- one or more slides with books I have read or am currently reading that I recommend for the prompt
- a list of additional books from my TBR (to-be-read) list for the prompt
- a text listing of the books that I shared in the slides
I might share one or more of the following in addition, depending on capacity and other factors:
- other supportive text as appropriate, such as countries included
- some quotes, notes, and/or reflections about one or more of the books
- links to other posts on the site where I discuss the books or prompt in more detail
I did many things to minimize hierarchy within these posts, and there will still be some things that might feel odd, such as split galleries of slides, which was a choice made to address current limitations in how the galleries work.
If interested, find bingo cards, more background on the prompts, and other reflections, on the Reading Challenge page and if on Storygraph, join the challenge.
Mostly, my goal for prompt support posts is to share books for each prompt, as suggestions and as examples. This section will be first on every post and may be skipped.
Thank you for reading.
Recommended Books
Books I've read or am currently reading that I recommend for this prompt.
Read, Seed, Water, Feed 2025 reading challenge prompt and description, showing books recommended that I have read or am currently reading. All recommended books are listed lower in the post in the section “Recommended Books in a List.”
More Books from my TBR List
For some prompts, I’m trying to diversify what I read; for others, deepening my knowledge while also growing my perspective. For some prompts, there are definitely more books on my to-be-read (TBR) list than the ones I share that I have read or am currently reading. Here are some of those books:
Nonfiction
- Capitalism and Disability: Essays by Marta Russell (2019) by Marta Russell
- Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid (2021) by Shayda Kafai
- A People's Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice (2024) by Katie Tastrom
- Trauma X Holding Space Radically (2021) by Vo Vo
- Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault (2019) edited by Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee
Poetry
- Slingshot (2019) by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson
- Watchnight (2024) by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson
There are a few more books I was not able to add at this time, some of them are listed on other prompt support posts.
Recommended Books in a List
As a list, books I've read or am currently reading that I recommend for this prompt:
Nonfiction
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (2021) by Da’Shaun L. Harrison
Black Disability Politics (2022) by Sami Schalk
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook (2007) by Bruce D. Perry, Maia Szalavitz
Crip Negativity (2023) by J. Logan Smilges
Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety (2023) by Erica Woodland and Cara Page
Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health (2023) by Micha Frazer-Carroll
The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process: Transcend Your Toughest Times (2008) by David Berceli
The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017) by Jasbir K. Puar
Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction (2022) by Shira Hassan
Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People: A Disability Justice Primer (2016) by Sins Invalid
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing (2021) by Bruce D. Perry, Oprah Winfrey
Essays, Letters, Meditations, Memoirs
Another Word for Love: A Memoir (2024) by Carvell Wallace
Broken Places Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected (2019) by Nnedi Okorafor
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (2018) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The Cancer Journals (1980) by Audre Lorde
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (2020) by Alice Wong
The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs (2022) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013) by Kiese Laymon
Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life (2022) by Alice Wong
Poetry
Alive at the End of the World (2022) by Saeed Jones
Fiction
The Birdcatcher (1986) by Gayl Jones
The Deep (2019) by Rivers Solomon
Freshwater (2018) by Akwaeke Emezi
The Impatient (2017) by Djaïli Amadou Amal
Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories (2022) by Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
Martyr! (2024) by Kaveh Akbar
Model Home (2024) by Rivers Solomon
Nervous Conditions (1988) by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Noor (2021) by Nnedi Okorafor
The Salt Eaters (1980) by Toni Cade Bambara
Sorrowland (2021) by Rivers Solomon
An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017) by Rivers Solomon
Wandering Stars: A Novel (2024) by Tommy Orange
Get any/all of these books wherever you get your books.
Please support libraries however you can. Find out many ways to get involved in supporting libraries at Libraries for the People.
Please consider purchasing books when they are available from Workshops 4 Gaza's bookstore. When I share books that are available for purchase there at the time of posting, I will list them here after the link.
Thank you for reading.
