‘Electrifying’ book about women with disabilities sells for six figures - Frances Ryan book

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Laurie P

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
A new book billed as a guide to life for disabled women and non-binary people has sold for six figures, which is believed to be one of the biggest book deals ever for a disabled woman in the UK.

Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girl’s Guide to Life by Guardian journalist, author and broadcaster Frances Ryan was sold to Penguin Random House’s Fig Tree imprint after a nine-publisher auction.

Ryan said the interest from publishers showed that they were “coming to understand that there’s a huge audience for stories by and about people who aren’t white, middle class or non-disabled.

“I think that really reflects how titles about disability are finally being recognised as mainstream and vital,” she added.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society...-sells-for-six-figures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 
I am very excited about the book and hopeful about its effect on the publishing industry/ potential knock-on effects in terms of disability narratives and stories.

I am also personally very pleased for Frances Ryan as she is always so empathetic and engages in a thoughtful and kind way with people on twitter, so she seems like a good person.
 
Another excellent article in the Graun today. I won’t link as it’s specifically party political.

According to the Shaw Trust, which ranks her in the Disability Power 100, she “has generalised muscle weakness and uses a wheelchair”.

Of course, she has a perfect right not to say anything further. But I can’t help wondering if she is one of us. It’s exactly how I would describe my disability in logistical terms if I really didn’t want to discuss ME.
 
Frances Ryan on Twitter.

"Almost too excited to say that I wrote the cover-story for May’s @BritishVogue - a profile of the wonderful @SelmaBlair. On newsstands Tuesday 25th April."

"The whole issue is a disability special, curated by the ever great @TheSineadBurke and a Vogue team dedicated to - at last - putting disabled women front and centre of fashion. I’m thinking of the disabled girls who get to see themselves reflected on the cover of Vogue today."

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Ariel said:
I am very excited about the book and hopeful about its effect on the publishing industry/ potential knock-on effects in terms of disability narratives and stories.

I am also personally very pleased for Frances Ryan as she is always so empathetic and engages in a thoughtful and kind way with people on twitter, so she seems like a good person.
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yes the knock-on effect is very much needed. In pop culture too. I’ve watched a few ‘medical’ soap opera type things over recent years and to say they are tropes us an understatement.

I’m quite shocked for example if you look at Chicago med. almost every episode some woman with a mind-caused illness. As someone sensitive to the messaging in makes talking to women power layouts etc from marketing I’m even quite stunned. It’s bigger than ‘just’ reflecting the paternalism of the industry it portrays itself. It is such out if proportion %s of ‘how many women entering just needed the make psych to teach her how to think more straight’ it feels like propaganda of misogyny ly of the hysterical woman stuff behind Beard and McCready, FND

I despair without us being portrayed as the people we are instead of ‘at best’ tropes on unkind twisting of the spoonie idea that all the obvious tropes will ever stop so I can even call out those who are misogynistic to my face.

and the impact of that misogyny, that cackling from thick men and women inferring I’m saying you are hysterical and when you correct me I look at you like I’m swirling my finger round my temple to pantomime to others ‘because I’ve got culture on my side what are you going to do about it’ makes me not want to live and sick to my stomach violated. And it was dine by people claiming ‘they were helping’ claiming they do ‘mental heakth’ when they are weaponising it in a way that destroys my ability to exist even in past or present. And I don’t feel confident most who aren’t at the thick end of being in that hell even back those of us who are up ‘because they don’t need the fight’. So we’ve been left as toys with bigger fears than living and dying it’s whether we will ever have been allowed to write down and be heard and backed up even by those who are positioned to see it and back up that truth who we are and what we live in daily. And it is daily.

At this stage it isn’t just about changing culture but knowing something somewhere is going into history that says ‘all those people who are like this aren’t ok with the benevolent paternalism compromise of the new guidelines stuff not releasing us from all this truth wise because that would never change the dialnenough for us to exist with our crap surroundings, well when you belittle our voice and call us mad when we speak and replace who we are with skits of some silly woman of Chicago med maybe underneath, maybe there were some of us at some point who were like this instead’.

If you’ve been cut out of being a player in your own life for your entire life then the narrative where others broke it turned to be still their narrative that still pretends it’s broken because of you and your now lucky to be thrown a bone. and living for one day is just what I’ve been holding out for decades for the hope of what you’ve been holding out for - which means being able to be you the authentic you and not be cut down after your fifth word just noting a fact about yourself - feels like it’s never going to be not crushed by selfish others. Well you want something out there about anyone in our situation that isn’t from outsiders writing who we are of self-gaslighted people.

It’s hard particularly with the awful weaponised by thicko bystanders too situation some of us are in to even safely describe how harmful this no one even questioning the tropes so these people might even think they are wrong when they repeat them stuff is for people who have and have had nothing - it’s the last shred we never ever had that people don’t even realise we didn’t have. Hang on don’t live and exist and never ever will who you have been and the reality EVER even be recorded in posterity. It is the most violating feeling like your whole life has been made a misery so it can be used as a rewritten version of what you lived so even that truth has been made to erase you.
 
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