This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone talks with writer and disabled rights advocate Keah Brown about her essay collection The Pretty One.
We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
“What I want so badly is disabled characters who aren’t plot devices for somebody else. I want disabled characters who get angry and who get sad and who are happy…I’m tired of being the token thing in someone’s story.”
“For me to be vulnerable was to tell the story that I believed in. And because I still believe in it, I’m good regardless of what people think.”
“In writing this book it was both an apology to my younger self who was so sad and depressed and didn’t like herself. And it was also a way for me to teach people about the identity of disability and what it’s like to live in my own disabled body and help change the perceptions that people have about disability.”
“Sometimes you have to write even when you don’t want to. There’s never going to be a perfect time for you to sit down and write, you just have to make it work whenever you can get it in.”
“Whether you’re disabled or not I want people to leave the book feeling good about themselves and I want them to question the way they see the world and the people in it.”