I Don’t Do Disability

by Adelle Purdham

Don’t judge this book by its cover. Intimate, layered, raw and urgent, it takes us into the core of Purdham’s life: her role as mother to a daughter with Down syndrome. Even if you don’t believe you’re “interested in disability”, this book is worth reading. Purdham’s prose is poetic without being precious—she can pivot from statistics about access to intimate dialogue with her daughter. She has a knack for the comedy of the everyday: the absurd etiquette of playdates, the baffling bureaucracies of special-needs services, well-meaning but clumsy remarks from strangers. But underneath the laughter, you feel the weight of every interrogating question: What is “normal”? Who gets to define value?

Purdham is disarmingly honest and her essays are delightful and never didactic: a chapter on cross-country skiing doubles as a meditation on navigating unfamiliar terrain—with the sky’s white expanse both a threat and an invitation. In another essay, a garden bee becomes a model of tenacity, its singular mission mirroring a parent’s fierce advocacy. By the final essay I was astonished at how thoroughly Purdham’s reflections had settled into my own thinking. This book doesn’t just inform, it transforms.