Cheryl Marie Wade

4 March 1948 – 21 August 2013

Cheryl Marie Wade was a poet, performer and activist, and one of the defining voices of the disability culture movement in the United States.

She made her disabled body, above all her hands, the subject of her art, and argued that disability is a culture and an identity to be claimed. She was a member of Wry Crips, a theatre company of disabled women in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poem “I Am Not One of The” (1988) became one of the most widely reprinted poems of the disability rights era.

Her stage work included A Woman With Juice and Sassy Girl: Memoirs of a Poster Child Gone Awry. Her papers are held at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. This website brings her writing together for the first time. Reasonable efforts have been made to find the copyright holder, but have been unsuccessful. If you believe you are the copyright holder, or know who is, please get in touch.