22 Quotes by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Disability Justice allowed me to understand that me writing from my sickbed wasn't me being week or uncool or not a real writer but a time-honoured crip creative practice. And that understanding allowed me to finally write from a disabled space, for and about sick and disabled people, including myself, without feeling like I was writing about boring, private things that no one would understand.

The thing I always wanted to say is that surviving abuse sucks. But it's also a choose-your-own-adventure story.

To me, one quality of disability justice culture is that it is simultaneously beautiful and practical. Poetry and dance are as valuable as a blog post about access hacks - because they're equally important and interdependent.

It [i.e. disability justice] means we are not left behind; we are beloved, kindred, needed.

A Disability Justice framework understands that all bodies are unique and essential, that all bodies have strengths and needs that must be met.

To me, one quality of disability justice culture is that it is simultaneously beautiful and practical. Poetry and dance are as valuable as a blog post about access hacks – because they’re equally important and interdependent.

If collective access is revolutionary love without charity, how do we learn to love each other? How do we learn to do this love work of collective care that lifts us instead of abandons us, that grapples with all the deep ways in which care is complicated?

Disability Justice allowed me to understand that me writing from my sickbed wasn’t me being week or uncool or not a real writer but a time-honoured crip creative practice. And that understanding allowed me to finally write from a disabled space, for and about sick and disabled people, including myself, without feeling like I was writing about boring, private things that no one would understand.

Disabled Cherokee scholar Qwo-Li Driskill has remarked that in precontact Cherokee, there are many words for people with different kinds of bodies, illnesses, and what would be seen as impairments; none of those words are negative or view those sick or disabled people as defective or not as good as normatively bodied people.