Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire by Alice Wong

Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire Reviews

• 
  emma

  i'm an alice wong stan
• 
  Richard Propes

  With "Disability Visibility," Alice Wong shook us all up with her remarkably constructed collective of writers sharing with refreshing openness and honesty the contemporary disability experience.
  
  As a follow-up to "Disability Visibility," Wong is back with "Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire."
  
  I should start, I suppose, by telling you just a little bit about myself. I'm a paraplegic/double amputee wheelchair user with spina bifida who has, in just the past three months, also survived both bladder and prostate cancer. I'm well past my life expectancy and have also accomplished far more than most anyone expected.
  
  I was married in my early 20s, briefly and poorly, and I also spent a good majority of my 20s shouting an enthusiastic "Yes!" to anyone and everyone who was interested in me sexually whether I liked them or not and even if they found me to be nothing more than a sexual novelty or curiosity (rather common, actually). My years of being a survivor of sexual abuse/assault as a child and adult have undoubtedly complicated matters.
  
  Fortunately, I eventually figured out that it was not really sex I desired but intimacy. While the two can certainly peacefully co-exist, and often do, it's certainly not mandatory and over the years I've discovered far greater satisfaction in friendships than anything romantic. Over the years as my disability worsened, the act of sex became more challenging and painful and after my most recent cancer bout it's removed from the equation.
  
  My dream of one day being Richard Gere in "Call Me" is left in the dust.
  
  Thus, I approached "Disability Intimacy" with a tapestry of anxiety, hesitation, exhilaration, and an awareness that I'm at this unique place in my life where intimacy, emotional and physical, is both craved and feared.
  
  "Disability Intimacy" is, as one would expect, the much anticipated follow-up from one of the leading disability activist voices. Wong is uncompromising in her views, simultaneously bold and revolutionary while also being communal and surprisingly vulnerable. It's important to note, however, that Wong is the editor here - "Disability Intimacy" is a collective of essays on love, care, and desire from a diverse community of voices with a diverse array of experiences in the realm of intimacy.
  
  "Disability Intimacy" defies easy description. It is no one thing. It is not solely about sex. It is also not devoid of discussions about sex. It is not solely about romantic love. This is not a warm and mush collection of essay - in fact, it is often quite intellectual and grounded in thought and meaning and discussions around politics and social justice.
  
  "Disability Intimacy" invites a discussion of what intimacy is and also invites a more inclusive approach to it with broader and more universal definitions of what it means to be intimate with another human being.
  
  For me, intimacy is an invitation into fullness of relationship with another person or living being that is based upon mutual love and respect. I consider friendship just as intimate as a romantic relationship - the intimacy is simply expressed, in most cases, differently.
  
  "Disability Intimacy" explores caregiving, community, access, and friendship and how these things can offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections that we form with others. While many with disabilities shy away from honoring "forced intimacy" or intimacy created by caregiving relationships, I lean toward a broader perspective that finds some beauty in the way vulnerability can create intimacy in different ways. Of course, this is different with "paid caregivers" than the caregiving that happens naturally in everyday life.
  
  Again, "Disability Intimacy" challenges us to think about these things.
  
  "Disability Intimacy" does certainly explore sex, sexuality, sexual liberation, and disability justice. "Disability Intimacy" talks about the joy of sexual discovery, disabled love stories, disabled joy, and disabled kink.
  
  25 voices here. 25 original pieces brilliant in their own individual way and all curated by the brilliance and sensitivity of Wong. There are essays, photo essays, poetry, drama, and even erotica honoring the full spectrum of the disability experience with dreams, fantasies, and deeply personal revelations.
  
  What isn't here? Stereotypes. Shaming. Othering. Ableism. Inspiration porn. Infantilizing. So much more.
  
  "Disability Intimacy" is bold, daring, revolutionary, challenging, vulnerable, empowering, well-informed, intelligent, daring, loving, compassionate, sensual and, yes, downright intimate.
• 
  Tara

  This was excellent, a beautiful collection of essays covering so many different aspects of disability intimacy. Love, care, and desire are covered but in so many different and nuanced ways. I can't recommend this enough to everyone. Reading this as a person with multiple disabilities, I felt so seen in so many essays, I know there are a few essays I will often return to.
  
  Thank you to the publisher Vintage for the gifted advanced reader copy, which included an audiobook version. The audiobook is also excellent and read by a full cast, highly recommend it.
• 
  Jessica

  Alice Wong is moderating a series of virtual/online panel discussions with contributors to this book in association with The Longmore Institute on Disability and the Disability Visibility Project.
  
  Hear from panelists featured in the anthology as they explore disability and intimacy themes tied to romance, community, caregiving and friendships.
  
  To register:
  March 26, 2024 -
  tinyurl.com/DisabilityIntimacy
  April 25, 2024 -
  tinyurl.com/DisabilityIntimacy2
  May 23, 2024 -
  tinyurl.com/DisabilityIntimacy3
• 
  Kendra

  I always want to like disability activist Alice Wong's edited collections more than I actually do. The idea here--an anthology of writings on disabled intimacy, in its many varied forms--is brilliant and needed, but many of the essays included didn't do much to help me learn more about the ways the disability community--of which I am part--thinks about intimacy. There's a lot of demanding and in many ways the valorization of taking rather that giving, and the idea of intimacy often seems very transactional--but often one-sided--for many writers. It's a discomforting read, and I've been working through my thoughts on it slowly, trying to process and make sure I am being open in my reading and my empathy and compassion, and still, I feel that there's a a gaping hole in the center of the book, where disabled caregivers might have been more highlighted, and the intimacy of disabled families.
• 
  Rebecca Parten

  Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for an advanced reader copy. The opinions expressed are mine alone.
  
  As a cis straight disabled woman I was intrigued by this anthology. I was already familiar with some of Alice Wong’s book and advocacy. I also acknowledge my privilege of being a white, highly educated research associate in the area of gynecological and reproductive health for women with physical disabilities. I wanted to read “Disability Intimacy” for both personal and professional reasons. Personally, I found some of the essays especially relatable; describing similar experiences in terms of varying degrees and types of intimacies. Others essays opened my eyes to different perspectives and experiences. I think this is an important and diverse collection that anyone interested in the area of disabilities, intimacy and sexuality should read. I did find some of the verbiage a bit hard to read because it was sexually explicit. But to each their own in terms of how they want to express themselves.
• 
  Morgan

  *3.5
  Disability Intimacy is an interesting essay collection on disability and intimacy in its many forms. I found myself a bit disappointed with this one because the essays didn't work together in a complimentary way that I expect from essay collections. Some essays were great but there were some that felt unfinished or should have been cut entirely.
• 
  Brice Montgomery

  Thanks to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for the ARC!
  
  Depending on one’s perspective, Alice Wong’s Disability Intimacy is a mixed bag or a grab bag, a collection of essays without a clear organizing principle. Whether or not that matters will depend entirely on the reader.
  
  I think well-edited collections should always feel in conversation with themselves—each essay complements the other essays in some way. I cannot say that is the case for this book, where Wong’s editorial imperative feels unclear, resulting in pieces that often seem to talk past one another. This is a book with a splintered self.
  
  Many of these essays are amazing, but just as many feel unfinished, unnecessary, or uncertain of their own inclusion.
  
  A major way this problem plays out is ambiguity in its intended audience—is this book designed to offer solidarity to those who have been marginalized by disability, or is it meant to educate the uninformed?
  
  Many of the essays in the former category fall flat, particularly those in the first half. They feel like workshop drafts, floundering for a clear purpose before their truncated endings. I don't think essays are obligated to be didactic or make any grand statements, but these aren't about anything. Moreover, some of them play dangerously close to the “actually, my disability is a superpower” trope while attempting to reframe pretty run-of-the-mill life experiences as exceptional. I’m sympathetic to how pain can harbor an almost obsessive interiority, but about half of the essays in this book are, bluntly put, solipsistic, thereby undermining any discussion of intimacy. These pieces feel like a denial of disability rather than a desire to see the world truly recognize it. The result is a deeply muddled understanding of equity that I can’t help but think is counterproductive.
  
  The book unintentionally highlights how we need better language for disability, terminology that creates space for multiple subjectivities without promoting insularity. In many of the personal essays, we see old words trying to form new discussions, and I think it simply does not work—feeling anxiety over being immunocompromised at an orgy is not the same as needing in-home care at all times. Is it even appropriate to call both "disability?" While reading, then, I wondered—how can we open definitional frameworks without resorting to shapelessness? I believe care, both in the sense of material support and emotional intimacy, requires attention, and attention requires us to name accurately.
  
  The best essays in Disability Intimacy wrestle thoughtfully with this tension, and many of the academic-skewing pieces—constrained to the latter half—are incredibly thought-provoking. Kennedy Healy and Marley Molkentin’s “Care During COVID” is excellent, as is Travis Chi Wing Lau’s piece on disability aesthetics. Ashley Volion and Akemi Nishida’s “Igniting Our Power by Reclaiming Intimacy” also thoughtfully picks at the power of language in how disability is constructed, along with all of the emergent nuances that go along with it. Elsewhere, we read about the forcible presence of the state in determining a relationship’s validity, and it is stomach-turning to behold. These essays are unified in their deep concern with our present reality while calling for a better one.
  
  A few of the personal essays also exhibit the same strength, such as Marie E.S. Flores’s “My Journey to Motherhood” and Yomi Sachiko Wrong’s “Primary Attachment.” These pieces exhibit such gracious and thoughtful reflection about when competing subjectivities come into contact. Rather than resorting to indignation, these authors begin to offer new language towards a richer understanding of disability. They honor their own experiences, but they avoid insularity and instead envision a world that has room for them. I would be remiss to not acknowledge how wonderful some of the arts-centric essays are too, especially Sarah Young Bear-Brown’s piece on beadwork.
  
  In the end, then, Disability Intimacy feels like two books with competing premises—one is defined by individuals angry at not getting their way, and the other is characterized by collective ambition for finding the way. With clearer editorial direction, these two halves may have coalesced, strengthening both themes, but as it stands, I wouldn’t recommend the book. If you’re interested, it’s probably better to just seek out individual essays so you can give them the attention they deserve.
• 
  Bailey Storkson

  Thank you, Vintage Anchor, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
  
  I want to preface this review by saying I fully loved "Disability Visibility," and that book was the reason I requested and was excited for a copy of "Disability Intimacy." However, I did not have the same enjoyment of "Disability Intimacy" as I would have hoped. 
  
  Part of my struggle comes from the sequence the essays are put in, especially Part 1, which felt the most disjointed. Though I say that, I do believe that I enjoyed almost every essay in Part 1. My personal favorite for the entire collection is "Primary Attachment" by Yomi Sachiko Wrong. Which covered so many difficult topics in such little time.
  Part 2: Pleasure and Desire really only focused on the solo experience of pleasure, and I do wish there had been something added about sexual pleasure with a romantic partner as well. An essay that felt close to that was "Know Me Where It Hurts" by Carrie Wade, where the writer describes finding pleasure in her disabled body while with another partner; however, that focuses more on the physical body and not the emotional connection. I think what I was hoping for with Part 2 was more talk about the emotional parts of pleasure.
  Part 3: Creativity and Power gave me the same feeling that "Disability Visibility" did. Which may or may not be a good thing because, in some of these essays, I don't see the "intimacy" connection. I still enjoyed them, but for them to be in a collection about "intimacy," it felt more like they belonged in "Disability Visibility." Even so, I loved this section.
  
  
  Overall, it was a pleasant enough read, and I am glad to have gotten further insight into the lives and feelings of other disabled individuals. This is just not a book I would want to own physically on my shelves or to go back and reread the whole thing. I'm happy to have bookmarked selections, and I love that I can search further into those writers. Would I recommend this collection? It really depends on the person. If you are someone who has already been reading more about disability access, rights, and personal experiences, then I think this would be a good addition to your reading list.
• 
  Leticia

  I love Alice Wong's work and the personal stories in Disability Visibility, so when I saw this book was coming out I knew I had to read it. DIsability Intimacy is a beautiful compilation of disabled stories about relationships, love, sexuality, friendship and found family and how being disabled teaches us so much about ourselves, our needs and how necessary it is to be interconnected in a very disconnected, ableist world.
• 
  Emily Fritz

  An excellent collection of essays written by, instead of about, a variety of persons on the disability spectrum. It showcases their lives in an intimate way the ableist world sometimes pretends doesn’t exist. This is the first time I’ve read about disabled adults from all walks of life with their own thoughts and very real desires. This should be required reading for everyone disabled or not.
• 
  Frankie Sellitto

  I LOVED THIS TITLE
  
  Every single story within this collection spoke to a beautiful and diverse portion of disabled life. I found it inclusive, well ordered, and deeply moving.
• 
  Tara ☆ Tarasbookshelf

  I was excited to get advanced access to a digital ARC (Advanced Readers Copy) courtesy of NetGalley to the much anticipated follow up to the 2020 anthology, Disability Visibility, by editor Alice Wong. Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, is the second comprehensive and nuanced collection by Alice Wong, giving voice to a diverse spectrum of disabled people in a variety of beautiful and touching forms, this time on the subject of intimacy.
  
  As we are all just a step away from disability, something most of us will have to deal with at some point in our lives, some earlier than others, I believe books like Alice Wong's Disability Visibility and Disability Intimacy are required reading for humanity and I recommend taking your time to be present with both books.
  
  A huge thank you to NetGalley, Authors and Publishers for advanced access to this work. All opinions are my own.
• 
  Angie DePompeis

  When I read Disability Visibility, it opened my eyes to a world I knew nothing about. Likewise, Disability Intimacy taught me even more about a topic I’m eager to learn about. The entries of each author were unique, educational, and honest. It was interesting to learn about the relationship between disabilities and intimacy. I loved reading about each author’s personal perspective. Each entry was from different from the last. Yet, in some ways, the experiences were very similar. This book could have also been called Disability and COVID-19. Many entries seemed to be written during or immediately after the pandemic. It did take me quite awhile to read everyone’s stories. A few of them made me feel a bit emotional. In the end, I’m glad I decided to finish the book. I hope Alice Wong continues to publish books like this.