Elsa Sjunneson

really enlightening with a lot of things to think about. her snark and strong commitment to activism and deconstructing the ableist ways of thinking that pervade society were a welcome change to how (if) this is ever talked about. some of this felt pretty obvious, but plenty was surprising and made me think. i'd love to have a conversation with her about some of the things she brings up, but she'd done enough emotional labor here on my behalf.

"Maybe you won't read it as disability because non-disabled society doesn't want to admit that if you need hearing aids at age 60 you're still equally as disabled as a 25 year old who has them."

"If I must be inspiring then let it be the kind of inspiring that makes real change, not New Year's resolutions. Let it be the kind of inspiring that makes you want to call your Congressperson and ask for updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act, that actually matter. Or to ask your favorite restaurant to offer large print menus. Let it cause you to consider the ableism that lives within you."

"The most awkward part of any job interview for me is when the conversation inevitably turns to ask if I need accommodations. Of course I do. I need a number of them. But I don't want the fact that I need accommodations to kill my job opportunities. The hardest part of this book is knowing that any future employer might see it, read about my disabilities, and decide before I get a say, that I am unemployable. There is a risk to being seen."

"When we are afraid of something, we are less likely to feel empathy for it. This is how racism works. This is how antisemitism works. And yes, this is how ableism works. Fear breeds hatred, or vast indifference."

"The message in the vast book of science fiction is that in the future, disability will have a nominal impact of your life because science and technology will have fixed you. This is not the same thing as saying that your disability will have nominal impact on your life because you live in a world that has adapted to you. Why is that important? Because the first one is a form of disability erasure."

"Science fiction should be grappling with questions of corporate culture, colonialism, and the body. But because the genre is too busy erasing disability from the narrative and writing us in as cautionary tales, we haven't been able to ask all the questions that will truly matter to us in twenty years. Disabled people are on the cutting edge of some terrifying revelations. Who owns your hearing? Who owns your sight? Who owns your memory? Who owns your spleen? We want to say that you do, but I'm not sure that's where the world is going, and science fiction could be helping us to untangle those thorny questions through thought experiments instead of testing them out on real people in real time."… (more)