Unbound - by Ben Mattlin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This insightful and often witty collection of essays charts the making of a reluctant disability activist-including his commentary for NPR, the New York Times and elsewhere.

Ben Mattlin was born in 1962 with spinal muscular atrophy, a congenital and progressive neuromuscular weakness. He never stood or walked but grew up expecting a normal life. In this book of essays, he chronicles that life and also charts his growth as a reluctant disability activist and public intellectual.

Mattlin's disability was from birth. Raised in a family that insisted that he be educated in a mainstream setting, he never thought about his disability as being an obstacle until adulthood. It was not until he had graduated from Harvard and could not find a job that he began to understand what disability rights activists were talking about.

These collected short pieces chronicle Mattlin's intellectual coming-of-age including his beginnings, difficult conversations about disability, the social aspects of being disabled in a nondisabled world, and a wider perspective as the author looks back on his sixty years of disability. The book contains a variety of essays intermixed with a few edited podcast transcripts. Some of the pieces are deeply personal; others are stridently political. All of them are guaranteed to make readers see life and the world in a new way.

Altogether, this collection is a frank, unsentimental examination of some of the most important and moving issues of our day--always rendered with intelligence, sensitivity, and a liberal sprinkling of humor.

Review Quotes

"Ben Mattlin writes with grace and humor about a lifetime of being disabled. These essays form an autobiography of sorts which is by turns instructive and inspiring. Although he may be a reluctant advocate, he is a powerful and eloquent one."-Jay McInerney

"Ben Mattlin's book does that rare thing: makes you think, makes you wonder, makes you hope, makes you angry, and makes you want to take action in both personal and collective ways. A beautiful and potent contribution to the stories about extraordinary bodies in ordinary time."--Emily Rapp Black, New York Times best-selling author of Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg

"Ben Mattlin is one of our most clear-thinking and insightful writers on the subjects of disability and society's flawed approach to difference. In this wise and irreverent collection, which spans from memories of high school as a child who didn't entirely fit in, to thoughts about the promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act, to reflections on the dark side of Jerry Lewis's Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon, he is at his absolute best."--Adam Cohen, author of Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court's Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America

Praise for Ben Mattlin:

"Ben possesses a unique talent for sharing the disability experience in an accessible, relatable, and compelling way. His words are powerful and authentic."--Shane Burcaw, president of Laughing At My Nightmare and cofounder of Squirmy & Grubs

"Disability has long been marginalized in the literature of social justice, but fear not: Ben Mattlin's here to shake us from our complacency and unconscious biases. His piquant, witty, intimate storytelling ranges across the spectrum of disability while probing the possibilities of change and the role of advocacy in fraught times. Mattlin binds together his public and private selves with singular savvy and style, a gift to us all."--Hamilton Cain, author of This Boy's Faith

"As a memoirist and a journalist, Mattlin's brilliant. His work, as it considers both the personal and public lives of people with disabilities--both people and disabilities as varied as the world and history itself--is lucid and philosophical and thoughtful. Mattlin understands people, and one of his gifts is to make that understanding legible to his readers. I would read anything he writes."--Elizabeth McCracken author of Bowlaway and The Hero of This Book

About the Author

Ben Mattlin is freelance writer and the author of four books: Unbound: Notes from a Reluctant Disability Activist (2025), Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post-ADA World (2022), In Sickness and in Health: Love, Disability, and a Quest to Understand the Perils and Pleasures of Interabled Romance (2018), and Miracle Boy Grows Up: How the Disability Rights Revolution Saved My Sanity (2012). A Harvard graduate, Mattlin has published essays in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Time, and he's been featured on NPR, "Here & Now," NowThis News, ABC's Prime Time Live, CNN, E! Entertainment Network, and independent radio stations across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, and they have two grown daughters.