Disability Pride Month: Bookseller Stories

I became a bookseller at fifteen when Mr. B's Bookery opened in my hometown of Kingston, WA. I had spent a large part of my youth in bed, recovering from whatever recent surgery. My parents wouldn't let me have a TV in my room, so books became my constant companions. Mr. B's actually opened when I was fourteen, and I went in every week to ask if they needed help. The urge to be around books was so strong. When the owners expanded the store after a year, they “hired” me for a few hours a week after school to shelve books. Twenty-four years later, I'm still immersing myself in books and the book industry.

Being disabled has definitely influenced how I run my shop. The Neverending Bookshop is a feminist, activist genre bookstore. I prefer to support authors from marginalized communities in genres that are still incredibly full of cishet white male voices (science fiction, fantasy, mystery). I have a Disability in Fiction section that I love to talk about. All of the books in it have been vetted by myself and pass the Kenny Fries test. I love finding books that intersect between disabilities and other marginalized communities. There's more of us than you might realize!

Physically, my shop is set up so that books are reachable from any position or height. All of the fixtures I have in the middle of my shop are on coasters, so I can move them however my customers need. The parking lot has disabled parking and ramps up to the buildings. It's not enough, but it's a start.

I wish more people would include the disabled community when talking about inclusion, DEI, and other marginalized communities. The disabled community, and people like myself, still work hard to even be recognized. The disabled community is still the invisible marginalized group. Why? Because of access. 

A lot of us have a hard time engaging with and in society. Some of us can't get into buildings. Some of us are stared at and have a hard time going into public settings. Some of us prefer our own, more accepting communities. Many of us are barred from making decisions because our ways of communication are different from speaking or writing. An incredible amount of gatekeeping exists in Western culture regarding disabilities. For example, can you name the last movie or TV show you watched with a disabled actor playing a disabled character? With positive representation? (Again, see Kenny Fries' take on representation.)

The independent bookselling community is a hard industry for disabled people to enter. Most jobs are physical, as we all know, and almost all jobs require people who can speak English (not ASL for example), can see and hear customers, can read book titles that are not printed in Braille, can lift a 15 pound box of books while standing or sitting. I hope stores are opening that can support more and varied disabled employees. I hope ABA can create programming that supports store owners who want to hire booksellers in the disabled community. We need more access to this — and other — industries!

Disability Pride Month is incredibly meaningful to me. It's another moment for me to be loud and proud about my disabilities. It's another moment to talk about being disabled, and how our society and industry can make room for disabled people and booksellers. As an advocate, I'm loud. I take up space that society says, as a disabled woman, I shouldn't. I share my experiences to hopefully encourage others to take up the disabled pride flag (yep, there's a flag!). 

This month is meaningful to me because in 1990 at six years old, I didn't have all of the protections that many Americans had at that point. Disability Pride Month is another chance to talk about how messed up the U.S.' healthcare/insurance system really is. And to share about how literally anyone at any time can become disabled, temporarily or permanently. According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 6 people globally consider themselves disabled. That's 1.3 billion people, or 15% of the world's population. 

I hope that in my lifetime, more accessibility, awareness, and a non-capitalist health care system will become the norm for the disabled community. 

—Annie