By Ainsley Lin, Grace Wiszowaty, Zoe Wallace and Nicole Sterba
To commemorate Disability Awareness Month, we share some of our favourite books written by authors with disabilities, hoping to add new books to your shelves and shed light on talented individuals.
Jean-Dominique Bauby
Jean-Dominique Bauby was a French journalist and magazine editor. Born in 1952 in Paris, Bauby’s career as a journalist led him to become Editor-in-Chief of Elle magazine. In 1995, he suffered a stroke that caused a condition known as locked-in syndrome. Bauby lost the ability to communicate verbally or move while still being conscious, being only able to move his left eyelid. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the novel that Bauby wrote after he was paralysed. To write it, he had someone recite the alphabet, and he would blink when they reached the correct letter. He composed the entirety of the story within his head and had it typed out letter by letter. His book follows his own story before and after his stroke. Heartbreaking yet hopeful, Bauby’s prose is a testament to his determination to live his life to the fullest and share his experience with the world despite any obstacles.
Naoki Higashida
Naoki Higashida is a Japanese writer who has repeatedly challenged societal misconceptions surrounding neurodivergence. Born in the city of Kimitsu in 1992, Higashida was diagnosed with a form of non-verbal autism at the tender age of five. Despite this setback, he learnt to communicate using an alphabet chart. This allowed his innate, creative abilities to flourish, as he began writing various stories and poems. When he was just thirteen years old, Higashide wrote The Reason I Jump – a groundbreaking novel explaining certain behaviours that are associated with autism and dismantling negative stereotypes regarding people with autism as lacking empathy or wit.
David Mitchell and Keiko Yoshida, the English translators of The Reason I Jump, first came across this book in an attempt to understand their own son’s autism. As Yoshida began translating the book, Mitchell hailed it as a lifesaver in helping them learn about both behaviours and misconceptions. Translated into more than thirty languages and adapted into an award-winning documentary, The Reason I Jump continues to educate people around the world, whilst also spreading an optimistic and hopeful message.
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, born in Ogidi, Nigeria in 1930. He wrote short stories, novels, poetry and essays. Achebe remains best known for Things Fall Apart, his novel about the life of Okonkwo, a leader of an Igbo community in Nigeria and the effects of European colonialism on his people. Things Fall Apart became an international bestseller and has been translated into more than fifty-seven languages. This has made Achebe the most translated African author of all time, so much so that he has been labelled as the founding father of African fiction. Chinua Achebe drew on the Igbo traditions he grew up with, inspiring him to write amid a post-colonial movement. He lent a voice to his community, which refused to be defined through the European lens, by allowing his stories to focus on the perspective of African characters, opposing some European works that characterised African people as one-dimensional.
In 1990, a car accident left Achebe paralysed, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to teach and write. He died in March 2013, but throughout his life, he won several awards, including the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2010. He also received honorary degrees from more than thirty universities around the world.
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer who was prominent in the forties for his short stories, poetry and translations. He was born in Argentina in 1899 and moved to Switzerland in 1914. He and his family travelled throughout Europe during this time and returned to Argentina in 1921. Fantasy, labyrinths and dreams were some of the themes that he explored when he began publishing after returning from Europe. By the sixties, Borges' short stories were translated and published throughout Europe and the United States. Many of his works have influenced modern fantasy and contributed to philosophical concepts about these otherworldly ideas. Some of his most famous works are Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), which investigate these captivating themes, including mazes, mirrors and infinite time. As he continued to write and explore whimsical motifs through various writing styles, Borges slowly lost his sight, becoming completely blind by the age of fifty-five. However, this did not stop his ideas from being recognised internationally and long after his passing in 1986.