Crip Genealogies is a collection of essays edited by Mel Y. Chen, Alison Kafer, Eunjung Kim, and Julie Avril Minich. This thought-provoking volume illuminates multiple genealogies of the term ‘crip’ and challenges the US-centered and white-dominated scholarship in disability studies. 

The introduction, co-written by the four editors, opens with an effort to differentiate ‘crip’ from ‘disability studies.’ The editors argue that while disability studies is an academic discipline, “crip indexes a wide range of positions, orientations, subjects, and acts, not all of them academic.” In other words, the editors view the concept of “crip” as creating possibilities for breaking free from the constraints imposed by academic institutions, which are often shaped by capitalist neoliberalism and marked by the marginalization of various minority groups. This framing of ‘crip’ is closely entwined with the editors’ ambivalence toward academia, which they characterize as essentially ableist. As the editors note, academia “rejects disability in its love for abilities (read: merit, excellence, rigor, achievement, productivity, and so on).” Nevertheless, they also acknowledge the difficulty of fully abandoning academic spaces, which allow them to connect with “kindred thinkers,” derive pleasure from teaching and intellectual pursuits, and explore opportunities for rebellion and transgression. 

Following their elaboration on the idea of crip, the editors touch on its multiple genealogies in the introduction, including white queer scholarship, critical race and ethnicity studies, Indigenous studies, Black feminism, queer of color critique, disability scholarship from the global south, and the use of ‘crip’ in referring to members of gangs/underground economic organizations. By illustrating the decentralized and diverse genealogies of the notion of crip, the editors challenge what they describe as the developmental model of disability scholarship, which tends to use the wave metaphor to emphasize the origins of disability studies in the global north while framing scholarship from the global south as merely the product of transnational transmission. In this regard, they engage in a decolonial practice that critiques white-centered disability scholarship for disregarding contributions from the global south and treating transnational disability studies as merely a subfield. The critique of white supremacy is central to this collection. In particular, the idea of “access exceptionalism” deserves our attention. According to the editors, access exceptionalism refers to the use of disability access rhetoric to reinforce white supremacy, which harms not only people of color but also people with disabilities. Access exceptionalism not only undermines the interests of people with disabilities under the guise of advocating for them but also obstructs potential alliances between disability justice movements and anti-racist efforts. 

Last but not least, the editors highlight the centrality of feelings in their introduction to crip genealogies. They write, “Thinking through ‘crip genealogies’ is not just a mode of doing but also a mode of feeling. The kind of work we are hoping to see, the methods and orientations and moves we want and desire, are both about doing and about feeling.” In the introduction, they identify various feelings that inform their thinking and writing, such as “crankiness,” “obligation/disloyalty,” “responsibility,” “joy,” “expansiveness,” “complicity,” “desire,” and “the unnameable, uncategorizable feelings.” This focus on emotions aligns with the collection’s celebration of personal narratives and subjective experiences as integral to its intellectual inquiry and methodological framing. 

Following the introduction is a collection of thirteen essays, organized into four parts: mobilization and coalition, crip ecologies and senses, genealogies, and institutional undoing. These sections explore disability justice activism’s alliances with other social justice projects, crip environments, non-linear genealogies of crip, and implicit violences embedded within normative institutions. The volume concludes with an afterword section, in which each editor contributes an 800-word description of their personal crip genealogies. In addition, the editors invite readers to share their understandings and practices of disability studies, fostering a decentralized and participatory process of knowledge production. In this way, readers are encouraged to reflect on how their potential internalization of ableist ideas contributes to self-discipline, self-denial, and the unfair treatment of others. 

In line with their efforts to challenge the white-centric disability studies, the collection features articles addressing disability issues in the global south and among communities of color. For example, in “Critical Disability Studies and the Question of Palestine,” Jasbir K. Puar discusses mass impairments and mobility restrictions in Palestine. Puar argues that “the field of critical disability studies therefore must account for its relationship to perhaps one of the largest producers of mass disablement in the world: US empire.” By drawing connections between disability and imperial violence, she highlights “carceral infrastructures that demobilize” and reframes disablement as “a massive architecture of global governance.” Likewise, James Kyung-Jin Lee, in his essay “Model Minority Life, Interrupted: Asian American Illness Memoirs,” examines the illness narratives of three Asian American authors—Fred Ho, Brandy Liên Worrall, and Christine Hyung-Oak Lee—drawing attention to the tension between these authors’ accounts of illness and the model minority narrative, a stereotype both imposed on and, at times, internalized by Asian Americans. Lee suggests that engaging with these illness narratives may create a space for Asian American readers to acknowledge their vulnerability and woundedness, offering a means to challenge and escape from the constraints of model minority ableism. 

Through its insightful introduction and a collection of well-crafted essays, the book guides readers to critically examine disability studies’ white-centric, English-focused, and US-based tendencies, especially in light of the fact that “80 percent of the world’s disability is located in the Global South.” The book critiques the tendency of superficial transnational scholarship to frame disability issues in the global south as mere complements to those in the global north; it illuminates the often-overlooked ties between imperialism and disability, which are often obscured by the field’s focus on ‘access’ and ‘rights;’ it exposes the ways rhetoric of access has been reappropriated to strengthen structures of white supremacy. By bridging disability studies, critical race and ethnicity studies, and transnational scholarship, this volume will resonate not only with scholars in these fields but also with anyone seeking to understand the connections between disability and systematic violence, as well as the ways ableism shapes everyday life.