Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, edited by Alice Wong, is a transformative collection that explores the intersections of disability, love, care, and desire. Through diverse perspectives, this anthology pushes back against ableist ideas of intimacy and expands our understanding of what it means to love and connect as disabled individuals in a world that often marginalizes us.

One of the collection's most poignant themes is the reclamation of intimacy as a form of resistance. Many of the essays explore the experience of receiving care, often evoking the importance of “disability doulas,” someone who intimately understands the complex rhythms of navigating daily life with chronic pain. Many of the explorations of managing pain while still embracing joy and connection reminded me of the quiet but profound intimacy inherent in disabled life. For example, the subtlety of asking, "Is it Old or New pain?" felt like a radical redefinition of how disabled people might frame their experiences in ways that give them agency, rather than the usual ableist framing of pain.

I also found Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's essay, “republics of desire: disabled lineages of longing,” on intergenerational trauma and solitude deeply moving. Leah captures the essence of how disabled and neurodivergent people often navigate relationships in ways that may not fit normative ideas of "Real Sex" or "Real Relationships" but are no less powerful. This essay hit home as it articulated the significance of fantasy and desire in safe, controlled spaces—where queer, neurodivergent spoonies can find pleasure and connection without fear of exploitation or harm. Leah’s words about disabled femme longing being capable of powering the world left me breathless.

Similarly, the concept of “crip kinship” weaves through many of the essays, resonating with other explorations of care politics and family abolition. These reflections on caregiving, chosen family, and collective intimacy feel particularly vital. This anthology shows how disabled people create new ways of caring for one another and themselves, outside of the traditional, often harmful structures of care dictated by ableism.

Alice Wong’s curation is masterful in its embrace of intersectionality, showcasing the overlap between disability, kink, sex work, race, and queerness. Essays like Carrie Wade’s Know Me Where It Hurts: Sex, Kink, and Cerebral Palsy challenge the desexualization of disabled bodies and emphasize how adaptability can lead to expansive sexual and emotional lives. Meanwhile, Khadijah Queen’s The Exhaustion of Pretense and the Illusions of Care reflects on the tension between needing to perform wellness and the deep desire for authenticity—another form of intimacy that disabled people navigate daily.

While most of the book is deeply compelling, I found the final section somewhat lacking in cohesion. The focus on intimacy became muddled, and the connection to the collection’s earlier, more radical explorations felt lost. Nevertheless, Disability Intimacy remains a powerful and necessary anthology. It redefines intimacy in ways that embrace vulnerability, adaptability, and the deep love that disabled people show themselves and each other as they resist a world not built for them. Alice Wong has once again brought together a collection that is not only radical but also deeply intimate in its own right.

📖 Recommended For: Readers interested in exploring the intersection of disability and intimacy, those who value personal essays on love, care, and desire, fans of Alice Wong’s previous work, and anyone curious about how disabled and neurodivergent people redefine pleasure, intimacy, and liberation.

🔑 Key Themes: Disability and Intimacy, Crip Kinship and Community Care, Pleasure and Adaptability, Vulnerability and Resilience, Desexualization and Kink, Intersectionality in Disabled Identity.