A paperback announcement rooted in community
Hello,
I’m writing to you today with a very special announcement.
My book, The View From Down Here: On being disabled in an ableist world, is coming out in paperback on 6 November!
The book has a gorgeous new cover, perfect for your coffee table or showing off on the train, that gives it a really fresh feeling. My famous pink blazer even made it in - now that’s branding.
Look how pretty it is.
Also, how great is that endorsement quote from my lovely pal Rosie Jones?
Talking of endorsement, the community has really shown up for this book. I am so deeply grateful for every share and recommendation, every review and comment, every DM and email. It’s really shown how supportive this community is (I love you all) but it’s also proved why this book is so important and why we need more disabled stories to be told.
All these messages inspired the book’s brand new foreword. This new introduction aims to widen out what people take from the book by explaining how, although it tells a very personal story, the years since I first published it have proved, over and over again, that my experiences are not unique. Whether through my reporting on access to sexual health and maternity services or via those messages I have received from readers, it’s become increasingly clear that I share my challenges and my joys with thousands of other disabled women. The intersection of ableism and sexism that is the focus of the book is having a material effect on all of our lives - perhaps more so now, with the rising tide of hate, than when the book was first published - and I hope this new foreword invites readers to think beyond the individual to the collective.
I’m so excited to send the paperback out into the world. Publishing the hardback was incredible and deeply rewarding, and I really hope that this new version will allow it to reach more people, as it is both significantly cheaper and easier for some people to hold or read (the ebook and audiobook are still available too). I am delighted that the new foreword and cover have given my words a new lease of life and that more people will discover them.
It’s a funny thing to be republishing a memoir I wrote three years ago (where has the time gone?). So much of it still rings true - from the lessons about loving our disabled, female bodies, to what I wish people knew about care, to how much joy their is in community to my anxieties around disabled motherhood. The core arguments, that ableism prevents disabled women from being seen as women at all, and that that needs to change, feel, if anything, more urgent than ever, as vitriolic debates about womanhood rage across society.
And yet in so many ways, the person who wrote this memoir no longer exists. That does not make her experiences less valid or the conclusions I drew from them less relevant or important, but it does make picking up the book again, after all this time, a strange exercise in confronting my former self. It’s a little unnerving, in the sense that 27-year-old Lucy felt like a very settled version of myself when actually everything was about to change, but it’s also nice to think about all the joy that is about to come her way. I worry - because I worry about everything (that hasn’t changed!) - that acknowledging this will somehow make people discount the stories and arguments in the book. But the entire premise of the book, and this newsletter, is to be radically honest about what it’s like to be a disabled woman in the world, so it felt disingenuous not to recognise that, while much is the same, lots of things are different too.
Still, having mulled all this over and talked it through with other writers and campaigners, I have come to a sort-of-conclusion about how I feel about the book. Among other things, the hardback was the book I needed to write. Incredibly, wonderfully, it turned out to be a book that lots of other people needed too. And two years on from publication, that’s still true, perhaps even more than before. Disabled women need to see so much change, and it’s that change that the book demands. In a way, it simply doesn’t matter that my life looks different now than it did when I submitted the manuscript. What’s important is that publishing it in paperback creates a new chance for disabled people to find it and feel less alone, and a new chance for nondisabled people to use it to catalyse that change we all need.
For it to realise those goals, the book needs your support. A pre-order makes a huge difference - please do bag yourself a copy if you can (or get one for a friend)!
But other things really help too: sharing about it on socials or IRL, recommending it to a friend, a book club or your local indie bookshop, or leaving a review somewhere so other people can find it and hopefully love it. This book is for and about community; it needs its own community to nurture it and help it grow. Could you be a part of that?
I hope you love it as much as I love hearing from you all.
Lucy
Praise for The View From Down Here
"A vital call to arms that demands we confront ableism at every level of society. Lucy Webster’s work is fierce, unapologetic, and essential - this is the blueprint for a world where all women belong." - Sophie Morgan, TV presenter
"I have never related to a book more. Disabled or not, you must read it! Amazing. I love it." - Rosie Jones, comedian
"A sharp, funny & deeply beautiful memoir that doesn't shy away from the realities of disabled life and instead takes power from them." - Ruth Madeley, actress
“A groundbreaking memoir that takes the deeply personal and makes it fiercely political. I loved it.” - Frances Ryan, journalist
"In a world that gives disabled women endless reason to believe we don’t actually belong, The View From Down Here plants a flag in the dirt and insists that we fundamentally do. Lucy Webster’s voice builds that belonging for us as she allows the fullness and contradiction of her life experience to blossom on the page – stories of friendship and loneliness, anger and joy, reliance and freedom, grief and liberation, despair and hope. I felt my own sense of belonging dig deeper roots as her stories washed over me." - Rebekah Taussig, author
We need more writing like this to show that the fight was never over with the introduction of the DDA. Some people felt 'job done ' & breathed a sigh of relief... We shouldn't have. It was only the beginning of round 2. Over the years it's became increasingly difficult to gain that momentum again, because they have stripped us of our support & shut us away in our own homes instead of the big institutions.