The Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu

In honor of July being Disability Pride Month, I wanted to post my review of The Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu. It’s one of my favorite nonfiction books I’ve read this year!

Book cover of The Anti-Ableist Manifesto

Title: The Anti-Ableist Manifesto
Author: Tiffany Yu
Publisher: Hachette Go
Pub Date: 10/08/2024
Genre: Nonfiction
Edition: Advanced Reader’s Copy

Description

Founder of advocacy organization Diversability and creator of the viral Anti-Ableism Series on TikTok, Tiffany Yu takes readers on a revelatory examination of disability—how to unpack your biases and build a disability-inclusive and accessible world.

As the Asian American daughter of immigrants, living with PTSD and a permanent arm injury sustained at age nine, Tiffany Yu is well aware of the intersections of identity that affect us all. She navigated the male-dominated world of corporate finance as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs before founding Diversability, an award-winning community business run by disabled people building disability pride, power, and leadership.

Organized from the personal to the professional, the domestic to the political, the Me to the We to the Us, The Anti-Ableist Manifesto frames context for conversations, breaks down the language of ableism, identifies microaggressions, and proposes real actions that lead to genuine and authentic allyship.

How do we remove ableist language from our daily vocabulary?
How do we create inclusive events?
What are the advantages of hiring disabled employees, and what market opportunity are we missing out on when we don’t consider disabled consumers?

With contributions from disability advocates, activists, authors, entrepreneurs, scholars, educators, and executives, Yu celebrates the power of stories and lived experiences to foster the proximity, intimacy, and humanity of disability identities that have far too often been “othered” and rendered invisible. The Anti-Ableist Manifesto is an essential book for going beyond mere awareness and becoming an active anti-ableist working form a more equitable society for all.

Review

The Anti-Ableist Manifesto was everything I could have wanted and more. I loved that the author used the Me, We, Us framework to section the book and included several disabled voices. I also learned a lot about disability history that I wasn’t aware of and that sparked my own research.

This is a great read for the disabled and non-disabled alike. For the disabled, it can expose you to more diversity of thought and introduce you to concepts or resources you might not have been aware of. As a chronically ill person, I took lots of notes.

For non-disabled people, I think it has the potential to change your whole perspective on disability, whether that’s through making individual changes or advocating for systemic changes. And as mentioned in the book, there’s a possibility of becoming disabled at some point in your life, so you never know when the knowledge you gain from this book could help you or a loved one in the future.

And if you’ve read Disability Visibility, this takes some of those stories even further into tangible actions the reader can take.

I can’t say enough good things about this book. It leaves you feeling energized that change and creating a disability-inclusive society is possible.

*Thank you to Hachette for sending me an ARC of the book. All opinions are my own*

Author

Tiffany Yu is an award-winning social impact entrepreneur, disability advocate, and content creator. She is the founder and CEO of Diversability, a social enterprise to elevate disability pride and build disability power. Having started her career at Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, and REVOLT, Tiffany is now an in-demand corporate speaker, creating an approachable bridge in corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces. Tiffany is the cofounder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter, serves on the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games Working Group, and was a Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit. Her TED Talk, How to Help Employees with Disabilities Thrive, has over one million views. Her work and story have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Insider, Marie Claire, Forbes, USA Today, The Guardian and more. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
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