A review by hilaryreadsbooks
The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

5.0

[Thank you Arsenal Pulp for a gifted copy] 

Leah begins: “I believe in the disabled future.” I remember dreams of something like this, where disabled bodyminds are celebrated and respected and, to use language that Leah themself chooses, allowed to come home. 

This book. It’s a mourning (because how many disabled people have we lost to the pandemic and medical violence and lack of access to the care they need?); it’s a catalog (because the contributions of disabled people are so often ignored, even as abled people learned crip ways that have always existed as a way of survival); it’s an act of love (because how else to describe how Leah always manages to write words that make me go yes, yes, yes). Leah herself also titles it as prophecies, because even under the weight of grief, this is first and foremost about crip dreaming, about creation, about fashioning better worlds where all bodyminds are made to feel safe, welcome, and dignified—and keep dreaming, Leah tells us, please keep dreaming—they dare us, guide us lovingly, to imagine our answer to the question: “What future would you create if you leaned into the wild crip imaginings you maybe have not let yourself imagine?” 

If you are disabled, read this to be held in your grief, pain, and dreaming. If you are not disabled, this book is here to hold you too, and to remind you to be humbled by the glorious ways that crip bodyminds traverse this earth, and that the ferocity of our beings is something that cannot be ignored. 

Arsenal Pulp—please keep publishing disabled voices! We love you for it.
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