Why I Wrote This Book: Breaking the Cost of Silence

A vintage tube television with rabbit-ear antennas wrapped in foil sits on a hardwood floor against gold damask wallpaper, its screen showing only black-and-white static. Through a window on the right, the silhouette of a child on roller skates glides down a city street under amber streetlamps at golden hour. The image evokes a New York City childhood from the era before remotes, where watching TV required someone to walk over and turn the dial.

My mother once sent a relay of friends across blocks of New York City to bring me home so I could turn the TV. She did not have a disability. But she waited. Here is what that childhood memory taught me about what our field still asks disabled people to do every single day, and why I finally had to write this book.