Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw: Reimagining Success as a Disabled Achiever

In his sharp, illuminating debut memoir, South African disability rights advocate Ndopu chronicles his trials and triumphs as a disabled gay Black man enrolled at Oxford University. Diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, which weakens the body’s skeletal muscles, at age two, and not expected to live beyond age five, Ndopu defied all medical models. After graduating from college, he was accepted into the Master’s in Public Policy program at Oxford. Initially elated, Ndopu quickly settled into something more like optimistic ambivalence after he arrived at the university. Though he felt proud of receiving recognition from such a prestigious institution, he was an outsider among his able-bodied peers, dealing with a rotating cast of care aides and lamenting the school’s lack of accommodations for people with disabilities. Wryly detailing the costs and complications of his attendance at Oxford, Ndopu shines a light on ableism both conscious and unconscious (“Within a span of half a day, I’d been shuttled between care aides like a young person who’d fallen through the cracks of the foster care system, and now I was being prevented from using the bathroom,” he laments early on). This raw yet triumphant tale should be required reading. Agent: Bridget Matzie, Aevitas Creative Management. (Aug.)