Photo by Emma Quirk '26. Alice Wong's "Disability Visibility," pictured above, was selected as Mount Holyoke College's Common Read for the 2023-2024 academic school year.
By Emma Quirk ’26
Photos Editor & Staff Writer
Mount Holyoke College’s 2023 Common Read is “Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century,” edited by Alice Wong. The anthology, originally published in 2020, includes poems, essays, blog posts and stories that center on disability experience and justice written by disabled people.
Wong is a disabled activist, writer, editor and collaborator on many projects related to disability justice and founder of the Disability Visibility Project. The DVP began as a one-year oral history project and has become an “online community dedicated to creating, sharing and amplifying disability media and culture.” The anthology “Disability Visibility” was born from this project.
A wide range of stories and experiences are explored by various authors throughout the anthology. Earl Wren ’24 was grateful for the authentic and full portrayals of the experiences of those living with disabilities.
“It was incredible seeing disabled people talking about topics ranging from incontinence to Down Syndrome … to nonverbal and non-speaking people and people without ‘functional communication,’ to Dwarfism and nystagmus and facial differences and muscular dystrophy and so much more,” Wren wrote in an emailed response to Mount Holyoke News.
They noted that these people and topics are not always represented in disability community spaces, let alone outside of them. Wren further shared that there were other parts of the book which resonated with them.
“There were also intersections with Black, Asian, Indigenous, and other experiences of color in a way that is authentic and alive, mundane joys and everyday experiences and not just putting our trauma out for emotionless, perfectly worded, and perfectly presented education,” Wren said.
A story that stuck with Director of Accessible Education and 504 Coordinator Madeline Peters was “Radical Visibility: A Disabled Queer Clothing Reform Movement Manifesto” by Sky Cubacub. In this manifesto, Cubacub explores how mainstream clothing does not serve disabled and transgender people and how the few designers making accessible or gender-affirming clothing focus purely on function, ignoring aesthetics entirely.
“I was happy to read [Radical Visibility] because I had worked with many students that used wheelchairs and did not have raincoats, covering for their feet, and other issues because there are no clothing that fit their needs,” Peters said. “I know Sky is one person but there was a lot of need for clothing for people with disabilities.”
“I found myself feeling so mad and upset that the struggle is so deep and so widespread, although I know it is,” Peters said of their experience reading the anthology. Still, they felt invigorated by the work that Cubacub has been able to do.
The book’s dedication reads, “To my younger self and all the disabled kids today who can’t imagine their futures. The world is ours, and this is for all of us.” The statement reflects Wong’s desire to show that disabled people exist and are living and thriving in spite of an inaccessible world. Her activism was born from a need to improve her own access and quality of life and to create the space for visibility and role models she never saw as a child.
On Thursday, Sept. 7, members of the Mount Holyoke community gathered in Gamble Auditorium for a conversation between Wong, Wren and Professor of Religion Susanne Mrozik. The virtual event was also accessible through Zoom and included live captions and live ASL interpreters. Those who attended in Gamble were provided juice and cookies, and a staff member from Odyssey Bookshop sold copies of the book.
During the conversation, Mrozik and Wren alternated between asking Wong questions — aloud and through text-to-speech technology, respectively — and Wong responded with answers through her text-to-speech device. Wong explained her journey of becoming an activist and looked to the wisdom of the other writers and activists in “Disabled Visibility.”
The candor displayed throughout the conversation stood out to students. Bee Mayberry ’26 was struck by how open Wong was about her transition from wanting to be a researcher to becoming an activist.
“While [Wong] loves where she is now, she was frustrated that she couldn’t do the things she initially set out to do. That feeling hits close to home because I have had many moments in life where I wanted to do something so bad but I couldn’t because of my disability,” Mayberry said.
Technology was a major part of this event, as it was virtual, and two of the panelists used text-to-speech technology. “What stood out to me was the command and control that Earl and Alice showed using augmented speech,” Peters said. “It was a perfect example of how assistive technology works if people with disabilities are provided with the appropriate access.”
Throughout the conversation, Wong emphasized the lack of visibility of disabled people as a whole, especially the lack of representation of BIPOC people in the disability rights movement and the media. The book “Disability Visibility” centers disabled people of color and their experiences.
After attending this event, Mayberry said they now truly understand how “disability justice connects to everything … if someone is talking about disability rights but isn’t also mentioning the interconnections between the disability movement and all of these other systems of oppression, then they simply aren’t talking about the full picture.”
This sentiment was shared by many other attendees. “This common read is an opportunity for all of us to reflect on how disability intersects with what we do. Because it does! I hope our campus learns how to make our community more accessible for disabled students and disabled employees,” Mrozik said in an interview with MHN. “We have a lot of work to do.”
With that said, Mrozik and Wren emphasized that just improving access is not all that is needed. A key takeaway from “Disability Visibility” is the importance of listening to and learning from disabled people.
“Disabled wisdom translates across communities,” Mrozik said. “I hope that our campus learns from this book that when we talk about disability, we are not just talking about accommodating disabled people … ‘Disability Visibility’ is talking about more than accommodating disabled people; it’s talking about learning from disabled individuals and communities. And, doing so in a way that — in Keah Brown’s words — ‘decenters whiteness.’”
The event was followed by enthusiastic applause, and lively chatter about the conversation followed everyone as they exited.
“This is the start of finally recognizing disability as a complex and active identity with history and emotions and activism and labor, instead of something passive,” Wren wrote in their email to Mount Holyoke News. “Disability belongs in DEI … [and] belongs in academia … We belong everywhere … ‘Tradition’ and ‘we always did things like this’ have never been and will not be an adequate excuse for refusing to accommodate us. We deserve something more than the bare minimum, we deserve more than mere survival, we deserve thriving, and community and being truly included.”