Author(s): Hannah Diviney

Mind Body Spirit

A defiant coming of age story about a young woman coming to terms with all that she is, the good, the bad and the ugly. When it occurred to me that the only real books I'd ever read with disabled characters in them were specialty books, displayed and designed exclusively for therapy settings, some of the hollowness I'd learnt to live with like a bruise started making sense. Hannah Diviney has always known that her experience of the world was fundamentally different from those around her. While her friends went to soccer and dance and little athletics, Hannah was going to physio and doctors' appointments. While her friends got jobs, fell in love and went clubbing, Hannah surrounded herself with the fantastical worlds she found in books. But books where people like her were nowhere to be found. Refusing to accept the narratives, or lack thereof, that she'd been given, Hannah was determined to forge her own path in a world that wasn't designed for her, and to be the representation she'd always wanted to see. Hannah's story is filled with wit, passion and vulnerability as she transforms from outsider to creating her own media company, calling out Beyonce, Lizzo and Eminem for their ableist slurs and beginning an acting career. Both deeply personal and yet utterly relatable, I'll Let Myself In is a young woman's battle-cry over the voices who try to tell her who she can and can't be, and a reminder not to wait to be invited to the table but to break the door down and demand to be heard.