Journalist and author Frances Ryan on her new book and life as a woman with disabilities

Through the raging storms and dark clouds of discord, through years of political and cultural divisions too innumerable to describe, Frances Ryan has been a steady and unflickering light for disabled people.

The Nottingham journalist and author has kept a vigilant watch over governments and leaders. Over the voices dominating the discourse. Over the progress, or regress, of British society in understanding the issues at stake for people with disabilities.

Currently Ryan, a regular contributor to The Guardian and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, named by Women In Journalism as one of the ‘30 exceptional women journalists’ in 2022, might justifiably be described as the leading voice on disability and activism in the media and literary worlds. It is a status she has confirmed in this latest work.

Ryan’s first book-length work – Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People – released in 2019, made a damning case against the Tory government’s maddening mishandling of policy affecting people with disabilities. 

Later that year she gave a talk at Waterstones in Nottingham. Six years later, Ryan proudly notes, Crippled is “on university reading lists, inspired by a BBC short drama, and has been read around the world”. 

Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girls’ Guide to Life, goes beyond the politics and policy, to the many daily differences of living as a disabled woman. It is, she says, speaking to LeftLion, “an alternative narrative and paints a picture of what life is really like for a disabled person in Britain: the inequality and pain but also the humour, joy, and talent”.

The driving ambition? To inform and educate a wider audience about real life for people, especially women, with disabilities, in opposition to the ignorance, or pure indifference, that Ryan so often observes in society. 

As she puts it early in the book: “No one really talks about what it is to be a disabled woman, especially a young one. To go a bit mad. To experience pain or exhaustion or feel 92. To navigate all the standard parts of life – exams, careers, dating – but with a body that is different than everyone else’s.”

Drawing on Ryan’s own perspective on six core pillars of life – education, careers, health, body image, relationships and representation – Who Wants Normal?, she says, is about taking on the many outrageous claims and comments that disabled women are forced to endure in society, while simply trying to get on with living.

“There's this persistent idea in our society that the best way for disabled people to have a good life is to act like we're not disabled,” she says. “We get told to be productive at work but often aren't given the adaptations we need to thrive. We get encouraged to ditch mobility aids because ‘you're too pretty for that chair, love’.”

“What every chapter of the book does, I hope, is unpick these ideas, ask where they come from, and say: you can wear that dress, do that presentation, go on that date whilst being exactly as you are. Disabled women have no obligation to change – society does.”  

As well as being rich with accounts of Ryan’s own experiences, the book is infused with commentary from fifty women and non-binary people with mental and physical health conditions, whom she interviewed in the course of the writing. The result is a book as unique as it is important.

What are the memorable moments and insights this approach has yielded? Ryan says: “What I love about the interviews is the variety: sometimes they're funny or motivating, other times hard hitting or moving. Watchdog's Nikki Fox describing her bad dates made me howl. I love Jameela Jamil's take on her school days. And Emma Barnett's honesty on broadcasting on radio through chronic pain. 

“It was a rare thing to be able to speak to other disabled women and think, ‘Wow, I get that. That's happened to me too.’ I hope that's exactly how readers will feel when they see the book.” 

Crippled may have been written in a different era – indeed, what often feels like a different epoch. But the issues and conversations it raised haven’t gone away. Has society learned? Have governments learned? 

“In some ways, there's been clear progress – there's more awareness now – but in other ways, I think we're regressing,” Ryan says. “The increase in people citing mental health conditions, particularly when applying for disability benefits, has led to a backlash, stoked – and often created – by some politicians and media.

“As these conditions increase, we need NHS funding to treat them, absolutely, but also a culture that acknowledges they're real in the first place.” 

It is that message, about the deficit of basic acknowledgement, that rings most fervently from Ryan’s writing, whether it is in her now two books, or in the many campaigning columns she has written in the press. Not a call for pity, or well-meaning but misguided intervention, but the simple sense of value that Who Wants Normal? hopes to patiently explain.

“This is a book that says disabled people are valuable, worthy, and here. That shouldn't need saying but I'm glad I have said it. Now more than ever.”

Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girls’ Guide to Life by Frances Ryan is available at all good bookshops.

@frances.ryan85