A Transition to Crip Lit: A Plea for Disability Literature to be Included as Compulsory Reading for Secondary and Tertiary Students

This is a part-personal, part-academic piece of writing intended to explain to the uninitiated why educators must start to include fiction with a prominent disability connection, in particular in the form of plays, novels, short stories and even poetry, in syllabi. I write this from the perspective of someone who self-identifies as queer, quadriplegic, anxious and depressed. I also write this from the perspective of someone who has cis privilege and white privilege. These perspectives cannot be separated from the research nor should they be. This essay details what kinds of texts one might teach and why. A hypothetical reading list for a crip lit subject, or simply a place from which people can start to learn a part of my history, present and future.