The Disability Book Archive

[ID: A book cover. The background is grey, with white writing at the top and bottom and a photograph in the middle. The writing reads:
The title “Every Cripple a Superhero” in large white text at the top,
The author’s name “Christoph Keller” at the bottom in slightly smaller white writing,
Below this is the name of the publisher “allen lane” in lowercase, dark grey writing.
The photograph in the middle is a close shot of a flat curb next to a road. The flat edge of the curb is covered by a dark puddle. The reflection of a skyscraper can be seen in the puddle. /end]

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Content Warning:

TBD

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Summary:

Most stories of disability follow a familiar pattern: Life Before Accident. Life After Accident. For Christoph Keller, it was different: his childhood diagnosis with a form of Spinal Muscular Atrophy only revealed what had been with him since birth. SMA III, the ‘kindest one’, allows those who have it to live a long life, and it progresses slowly. There is no cure. By the age of 25, he had to use a wheelchair some of the time. ‘There were two of me: Walking Me. Rolling Me.‘ By 32, he could still walk into a restaurant with a cane or on somebody’s arm. At 45, ‘Rolling Me’ took over altogether.

Intimate, absurdist and winningly frank, Every Cripple a Superhero is at once a memoir of life with a progressive disorder, and a profound exploration of the challenges of loving, being loved, and living a public life – navigating restaurants, aeroplanes, museums and artists’ retreats – in a world not designed for you. Threaded throughout are Keller’s own photographs of the unexpected beauty found in puddle-filled ‘curb cuts’, the pavement ramps that, left to disintegrate, form part of the urban obstacle course. Those puddles become portals into a different, truer city; and, as they do, so this book – told with humour and immense grace – begins to uncover a truer world: one where the ‘normal’ is not normal, where disability is far more widespread than we might think, and where there always exist, just alongside our own, the lives of everyday superheroes.

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Notes:

This edition (that I am writing this entry on) was published by Allen Lane in 2022, however the earliest edition I can find of this book was from Switzerland, titled ‘Jeder Krüppel ein Superheld’, in 2020. Penguin Publishing is also responsible for the publishing of the ebook version in 2022, and are preparing to publish a paperback version in 2024.

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Archivist Comments:

I cannot remember who suggested this or where/if I found it. I also can’t find much in terms of reviews at the time of writing this entry.

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