She never set out to be a disability advocate, Tiffany Yu tells her audience in the introduction of her book, “The Anti-Ableist Manifesto: Smashing Stereotypes, Forging Change, and Building a Disability-Inclusive World.”

When Yu was nine years old, her life changed. It was November 1997. On the way home from dropping off her mom at the airport for a business trip, Yu’s dad had a seizure and lost control of the car that held him, Yu, and two of her siblings, causing the car to fly across the empty highway.

As a result of the accident, Yu’s dad passed away. Among the injuries she sustained from the accident, Yu was left with a traumatic brachial plexus injury, meaning her right arm was paralyzed permanently. Decades later, she was diagnosed with a mental health-related disability, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

The path to accepting her disability wasn’t always clear. Back then, disability pride was a foreign concept to many. But after pivotal moments in high school, college, and her early career Yu realized there was value in her experience as a disabled person. Today, she’s the CEO and founder of Diversability, founder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter, creator of the Disability Empowerment Endowed Fund, host of “TIFFANY & YU”, a social impact podcast, as well as a content creator, author, and (one of our favorite) Mochi Magazine alumna.

Disability and Asian Culture

In 2009, Yu started the first student-run disability club while at Georgetown University. She called it Diversability. 

Diversability’s origin story was actually inspired by Taiwanese American solidarity. “I spent a long time not really acknowledging my Taiwanese American identity. It really only was [when] I was 18 years old that I started identifying as Taiwanese American,” she says. “Once I started doing that, the number of friends that I made [and the] community, history, culture I got connected to, made me realize that depending on how you look at it, disability could be this health diagnosis … But it’s also this beautiful community, culture, history, pride, empowerment — the same way I see in my Taiwanese American identity, or even as a woman, too.”

Intersectionality remains a large part of her work — “all of these different networks that I’ve been a part of throughout my lifetime.” And for her, these networks are how she gets people to care about disability. It’s all about intimacy, from knowing and caring about people. “I want to meet people where they are because the more of you that I can get to care about me … you then care about the communities that I’m a part of.”

But getting to this way of thinking wasn’t easy. In fact, her identity as the daughter of a Taiwanese immigrant, her dad, and a refugee from the Vietnam War, her mom, was a significant factor in her own ableism. 

“Something that was really interesting about … my own unlearning ableism journey is how much of ableism was ingrained in me because of my cultural background,” she admits. She recalls studying abroad in mainland China and viewing how visible apparent disabilities are treated in certain East Asian cultures. 

“I only saw disabled people as beggars on the street or in orphanages and not in my classrooms or as my classmates or attending events,” Yu recounts. “If you had a non-apparent disability [like mental illness] … you either hid it away and never talked about it, or you pretended like it didn’t exist.”

Talking About Trauma and Stigma

Yu admits that she didn’t talk about her father’s death for years. She didn’t label the car accident as trauma until 2016, and it wasn’t until 2019 that she was diagnosed with PTSD. “I didn’t have those [trauma support resources]. In my upbringing, I didn’t even view what had happened as something I would need support on,” she articulates. 

Yu goes on to refer back to the moral model of disability, something that she includes in her book — the idea that a person is morally responsible for their disability, or in this case, “because your ancestral lineage is cursed.” For her, “This 10-year period of silence, of me not sharing about the car accident or my dad’s death, or wearing long sleeves all the time to hide my arm, were influenced by the fear of other people viewing our family as bad luck and not wanting to associate with us [because] our bad luck would rub off on them.” 

Of course, our parents often do things because they believe they’re protecting us, and Yu notes this. However, she confesses, “[These intergenerational beliefs] actually made it hard for me to show up in Asian American spaces, because existing in this one body as an Asian person … is saying, ‘Oh, you’re a woman. Ding. Oh, you have a disability. Ding. The other aspects around my dad’s death or the car accident. Ding, ding, ding.’ [At that point], I’m just like a walking billboard for familial shame, so do I want to show up in a space where people don’t want to claim me, or want to associate with me due to some of these traditional beliefs?”

Yu uses the phrase “collective gaslighting” to characterize these beliefs. “I feel like there’s an additional layer of stigma when it comes to disability because so many of us might still ascribe to a model minority, even though we know it’s a myth and so much of our respect and dignity is tied up with our family, with our household.”

Despite the strong stigma around disability in many Asian cultures, Yu reveals that the majority of positive feedback she receives on her work comes from Asian women. “Even if we take disability out of the picture, I want to show possibility and voice and leadership [with] my identity as an Asian woman … I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m here, and I don’t see anyone else like me, but I really care about this,’” she expresses. “Even outside of having [an Asian American audience] get involved with disability inclusion, it’s also just showing them the power of Asian American women as leaders.”

While Yu writes for a broad audience, there’s one other person that she keeps in mind with her work: her nine-year-old self. “Nine-year-old Tiffany is my ‘why.’” Yu tears up a little as she speaks. “She was dealt a very difficult situation that, for a long period of time, I don’t think she saw a pathway out of there. [But] I think she really would be in disbelief that she didn’t have to be so isolated and alone in her experience and that her story would change millions of lives … And I think she would be proud that she maybe made the world a little better for future nine-year-old Tiffanys.”

From TikTok to Text

“The Anti-Ableist Manifesto” was released in October, just in time for National Disability Employment Awareness Month in the U.S. But as the author explains, the book has been in the works, in some way, since 2020. That year, the murder of George Floyd and conversations around anti-Asian hate had raised interest in racial equity and a desire to better understand intersectionality. So, in December of the same year, Yu began posting short videos as part of “The Anti-Ableism Series” on TikTok as a way to hold herself accountable to creating content on the platform and address some of the questions she was getting about showing up for the disability community. 

Since then, Yu has expanded to other video content that show how she does things (like putting on a necklace) and goes about her daily life with a paralyzed arm. Her original series has nearly 300 parts and boasts over five million views. It was this series that inspired “The Anti-Ableism Manifesto.” 

Naturally, writing a book is much different than putting together a 15- to 60-second video. It’s a whole other process, for one — and with a book, there’s a certain permanence. One can take down a TikTok, but a book, “it’s so memorialized now,” Yu considers. “I don’t want this work to disappear. In translating this from a TikTok, which can feel like a fleeting moment, to turning this into a book, it felt like [taking] this moment [and turning it] into a movement.”

Even in her book, Yu makes a point to reference new media among the traditional research and reports. “Part of why I wanted to stress [new media is because] it’s still hard for this book to get traditional press,” she clarifies. “I’ve got a big five publisher behind me [and] a publicist [but] it’s still hard because disability is not seen as newsworthy. That’s why I wanted to show new media [because] it finally gave disabled people a chance to have a microphone and say, let me share my story my own way.”

As part of this, Yu declares, “We’re worthy of coverage, so we’re going to make our own noise.” And that she does. Her book captures attention with an eye-catching orange cover. Its title is intentionally bold with its choice of the word “manifesto,” too.

In the last few years, mental health conversations have been on the rise. That’s partly due to the COVID pandemic, which is its own mass disabling event, with 400 million people globally affected by long COVID. Yu additionally points out that there are wars, conflicts, and genocides continually happening in the world contributing to mass disablement. 

The thing is, anyone can become disabled at any point in their lives, whether temporarily or permanently. According to the World Health Organization, “Disability is a part of being human.” The latest stats report that there are 1.3 billion disabled people in the world. It’s no surprise that disability — and the need for anti-ableism — affects us all.

The Nuance of Allyship

At 260 pages total, not including the notes and acknowledgment sections, the book is still a fairly quick and easy read. That’s because Yu intentionally separates it into three sections organized around a “Me, We, Us” model — starting with your individual journey and ending with how we as a collective can create systemic change. 

“It’s essentially a social impact framework around how we can create transformative change,” Yu clarifies. “So depending on who you are, your entry to this conversation may be somewhere along that continuum.” 

From the very beginning, Yu caveats that this book isn’t all-encompassing. “It can’t be,” she writes. Just like everyone’s experience as an Asian American looks different, the disability community is not a monolith. 

It’s a reminder that Yu continually references in the book, and jokes that even her editor kept track of how many times she mentions it. “I wanted to make sure that this book was written by us [in the disability community] and what that means is I’m one human being. My arm is paralyzed. I live with PTSD. I’m a daughter of Asian immigrants. I was raised by a single parent,” she details. “Those are all perspectives and gazes that will permeate throughout this entire book. But how can I make sure I’m also incorporating other perspectives of people who have more apparent disabilities than mine.”

Yu writes this book with a non-disabled audience in mind, and for that reason, the book acts as more of an introduction to anti-ableism. She includes lessons on what disability and intersectionality are, how to think about disability, and why disability isn’t a bad word. As the book moves into the “We” section, Yu outlines how to support disabled people and become a better ally by asking better questions and stopping assumptions. Finally, in the “Us” section, Yu focuses on societal change, with many of these chapters highlighting work, business, and economic issues. 

The disability activist makes it clear in the book that being an ally, and eventually anti-ableist, requires action on a person’s part — and nuance. Allyship can’t happen in a vacuum. Mistakes, as hard as we try to avoid them, are inevitable. “There’s no one way to show as an ally,” she states. “What’s rooted in anti-ableism is the action. One day we could be anti-ableist and the next day, we do something that is in contradiction with that. So it’s this daily choice every single day of how we want to show up.” 

Fear often influences that choice, too. “Non-disabled people can fear disability or feel threatened by what they don’t know,” Yu writes, and that plays into the fear of getting things wrong when you’re actively trying to become anti-ableist. Even as a disabled person, “In my own journey, I’m still learning,” the author acknowledges. “I don’t think that learning should be about shame.” 

Shame actually drives people to inaction, Yu recognizes. “It makes us say, ‘I’m so terrified of getting it wrong and getting canceled that I don’t even want to engage in the first place — the safe place with whatever privileges you hold is not to engage.” For Yu, it’s the reason why in 2024, we haven’t seen meaningful change, particularly in disability employment numbers, even 30 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act. There’s still a long fight ahead, but her book provides a way forward.

She’s also realistic about the proposition of a truly anti-ableist society. In a chapter titled “Exist in the Contradictions,” Yu acknowledges anti-capitalism as one of the principles under the framework of disability justice. “Capitalism’s hyperfocus on productivity — the capability of our bodies to keep on producing — is ableist, and non-disabled bodies are valued over disabled bodies because of how much more they can potentially produce to support the capitalist system,” she pens. But given her background in corporate spaces, Yu recognizes that much of her advocacy work concentrates on finding ways for disabled people to survive and thrive under capitalism.

Still, the manifesto is a great book to read and keep on your bookshelf, whether digitally or physically. Becoming anti-ableist isn’t something that will happen overnight and with just one book, so it’s really a resource that you can continually refer back to. For Yu, she hopes that it can act as a guide, to help people see the change that’s possible.

“The Anti-Ableist Manifest” was released on October 8, 2024. You can order a copy of the book via our Bookshop.org storefront, where a percentage of your purchase total goes towards supporting our mission.

Keep up with Tiffany Yu via her website, across social @imtiffanyyu, and her organization Diversability.

Cover: Courtesy of Tiffany Yu