Chronic Illness Books

There are so many awesome people with chronic illness editing & writing books out there. Below are all the books I've found so far. If you have other books I should add, please reach out! I'd love to hear from you.

Books are arranged in alphabetical order by author last name. When available, I have listed the illness(es) the book addresses, so you can hopefully find books that are most relevant to you or branch out -- whatever adventure you're looking for.

• How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and their Caregivers, Toni Bernhard

• Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine, Uché Blackstock

• You Can Have a Better Period: A Practical Guide to Pain-Free and Calmer Periods, Le'Nise Brothers

  • Various gynecologic conditions

• How to be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick, Letty Cottin Pogrebin

• Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez

• Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, Maya Dusenbery

  • Rheumatoid arthritis

• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman

  • Epilepsy

• Touch Me, I'm Sick, Margeaux Feldman

  • Fibromyalgia

• Being (Sick) Enough, Jessica Graham

• I Pooped My Pants: Removing the Stigma of IBD One Pair of Trashed Underwear at a Time, April Michelle Harris

  • IBD

• Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, and Other Essays from a Nervous System, Sonya Huber

  • Rheumatoid arthritis

• Meaty, Samantha Irby

  • Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)

• Quietly Hostile, Samantha Irby

  • IBD

• We are Never Meeting in Real Life, Samantha Irby

  • IBD

• Wow, No Thank You, Samantha Irby

  • IBD

• Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, Suleika Jaouad

  • Leukemia

• Long Illness: A Practical Guide to Surviving, Healing, and Thriving, Meghan Jobson & Juliet Morgan

• Sick: A Memoir, Porochista Khakpour

  • Chronic Lyme disease

• Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine, Michele Lent Hirsch

• The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde

  • Breast cancer

• When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, Gabor Mate

• This is Body Grief: Making Peace with the Loss that Comes With Living in a Body, Jayne Mattingly

  • Autoimmune disease, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Endometriosis, Intracranial hypertension, spine injury

• Ask Me About My Uterus, Abby Norman

  • Endometriosis

• The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, Meghan O'Rourke

  • Chronic Lyme disease, autoimmune disease

• Teach Us to Sit Still, Tim Parks

  • Pelvic pain

• Gluten is my Bitch, April Peveteaux

  • Celiac disease

• The Future is Disabled, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

  • Chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia

• Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life, Margaret Price

• The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir, Sarah Ramey

  • Chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic regional pain syndrome, Lyme disease, others

  
  

• Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, Susan Sontag

  • HIV/AIDS

• The Body is a Doorway, Sophie Strand

  • Autoimmunity, chronic fatigue, COPD, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, endometriosis, gastroparesis, mast cell activation syndrome

• It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (but Were Never Told), Karen Tang

  • Various gynecologic conditions

• Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, Rebekah Taussig

  • Spinal cancer

• Tits Up: What Our Beliefs About Breasts Reveal About Life, Love, Sex, and Society, Sarah Thornton

  • Breast cancer

• The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey

  • Chronic fatigue syndrome, mitochondrial disease

• Disability Intimacy, Alice Wong

  • Various; this is a collection of essays by many authors with many different conditions

• Disability Visibility, Alice Wong

  • Various conditions