The Future Is Disabled

(Paperback)

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In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if the majority of people will be disabled in the near future and what if thats not a bad thing And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom become crucial if were going to create a future where surviving fascism, climate change, and pandemics and creating liberation are possible

Building on the work of her game-changing book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Piepzna-Samarasinha writes about disability justice at the end of the world, documenting the many ways disabled people kept and are keeping each other and the rest of the world alive during Trump, fascism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Other subjects include crip interdependence, care and mutual aid in real life, disabled community building, and disabled art practice as survival and joy.

Written over the course of two years of disabled isolation during the pandemic, this is a book of love letters to other disabled QTBIPOC (and those who care about us and the work of disability justice, the care crisis, and surviving the apocalypse); honor songs for kin who are gone; recipes for survival; questions and real talk about care, organizing, disabled families, and kin networks and communities; and wild brown disabled femme joy in the face of death. With passion and power, The Future Is Disabled remembers our dead and insists on our future.

Reviews

"The Future is Disabled is full of passion, compassion and fire. Its 18 chapters blur the lines between memoir, political essay, rant and eulogy, all of them united by the conviction that every body, mind, race and gender matter." --Ms. Magazine
"After reading The Future is Disabled, I feel more hopeful, and I think you will, too. I want to shout through a megaphone that everyone needs to read this book, because this text is one of the tools we can use to make it through the next several decades." --Autostraddle
"In its entirety, The Future Is Disabled dares disabled folks to exist outside the bounds set by our ableist society by using disability justice to survive and combat 'climate change, the rise of white fascism and white supremacy, and unending pandemics." --Jezebel
"In this searing essay collection, Piepzna-Samarasinha presents a hopeful glimpse into the future through examining the present from a disability justice lens ... It's a thought-provoking read." --Buzzfeed
"This collection of disability justice essays focuses on how the pandemic has affected disabled people, especially QTBIPOC disabled people. Piepzna-Samarasinha argues that we're on track for disabled people to become the majority in the future and asks, 'Have we ever imagined this not just as a cautionary tale or scary story, but as a dream' They show how disabled ways of thinking and working are crucial in addressing the problems we face right now. This book faces the deadly ableism of the world head-on while imagining a hopeful future. This is such a thought-provoking collection, and I can't wait to reread it." --Book Riot ("Best Books of the Year")
"Unflinching and confrontational, The Future is Disabled doesn't pull any punches. It is both an instructional guide and a critical, eye-opening manifesto ... Piepzna-Samarasinha is one of the strongest contemporary voices in the fields of disability and transformative justice." --Booklist

Author Bio

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Lambda Literary Award-winning queer disabled femme writer and performer of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Their previous books include Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice and Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, and they are co-editor of Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement.