Living the Edges

This collection brings together the diverse voices of women with various disabilities, both physical and mental. The women speak frankly about the societal barriers they encounter in their everyday lives due to social attitudes and physical and systemic inaccessibility. They bring to light the discrimination they experience through sexism, because they are women, and through ableism, because they have disabilities. For them, the personal is definitely political. Here, Canadian women discuss their lives in the areas of employment, body image, sexuality and family life, society's attitudes, and physical, sexual and emotional abuse. While society traditionally views having a disability as "weakness" and that women are the "weaker" sex, this collection points to the strength, persistence and resilience of disabled women living the edges.

Diane Driedger has written extensively about the issues of women and people with disabilities over the past 30 years. Her book The Last Civil Rights Movement: Disabled Peoples' International was published in 1989. She has co-edited two international anthologies by disabled women, and, most recently, co-edited with Michelle Owen, Dissonant Disabilities: Women with Chronic Illnesses Explore Their Lives (2008). Diane is an educator, administrator, activist, and researcher in the area of disabled women's issues in Canada and internationally. She is also a visual artist and poet, and holds a Ph.D. in Education.