Brave New Words, Not Without Us

About the Programme:
Brave New Words and Not Without Us bring together essays, stories and critical perspectives that ask us to rethink disability—how do individuals experience disability? In The Philippines and in Singapore, how do we decide on whose bodies and lives matter?

In this conversation, editors Angeli Lacson (Brave New Words) Victor Zhuang (Not Without Us) share the stories behind and in these two books: why they were made, whose voices they wanted to bring together, and what they hope the books might make possible. We’ll explore how disability studies and disability justice can open up new ways of understanding exclusion and inequality, including experiences that are often left outside of conversations due to prevailing politics.

Looking across Singapore and the Philippines, the conversation will consider the gap between rights on paper and rights in everyday life, and ask who remains unseen or unheard within the disability movement—from rural communities and migrants to people living in poverty, institutions, or without a diagnosis.

What does a genuinely accessible and inclusive future look like, and what can words, stories and collective action do to help us get there?

About the Speakers:
Kuansong Victor, Zhuang is Assistant Professor in Disability Communication at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University. He hopes to use his research to contribute to current debates about how inclusion happens both in Singapore and around the world.

Angeli Lacson is the author of Unbecoming (Paper Trail Projects, 2023) and the editor of the second volume of Brave New Words (Paper Trail Projects, 2026). A graduate of comparative literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman, her interests span disability and illness studies, social movements, and cultural production. She is based in Singapore and Quezon City, Philippines.

Adam David is a zinester and a high school teacher. He is a co-organiser of Better Living Through Xeroxography (BLTX), a small press expo staging yearly markets, workshops, and fora since 2010; and together with Conchitina Cruz runs the small independent press Paper Trail Projects. Their latest publication is PANSAMANTALANG MUNDO (TEMPORARY WORLD), a collection of writing by women political prisoners in the Philippines.

About the Books:
Brave New Words
Engaging with the dream of and struggle for disability justice, the works in the second volume of BRAVE NEW WORDS insist upon accessibility and community care as core tenets of a just world. Edited by Angeli Lacson, the anthology offers a glimpse into the intimate experiences and worldviews of disabled Filipinos, as well as a critical look at the services, support systems, and structures accessible to them. Foregrounding the Philippine experience in relation to disability, the collection takes disability as the starting point from which to think about a host of other political, economic, social, and cultural issues, underscoring the ways in which disability intersects with the concerns of other marginalized and oppressed groups. BRAVE NEW WORDS is a biennial anthology of works gathered in response to a specific theme published by Paper Trail Projects, a small press based in Quezon City, Philippines.

Not Without Us
Disability is all around us—among people we meet, the media, sports, our own family and friends. Undeniably, all of us have or will one day come to experience or encounter disability. But how can we reckon with the realities of those who live with disability, or its reality in our own lives? In a city-state slowly moving towards inclusion, how do those meant to be 'included' feel about such efforts? Not Without Us: perspectives on disability and inclusion in Singapore is a groundbreaking collection of essays that takes a creative and critical disability studies approach to centre disability, and rethink the ways in which we research, analyse, think and know about disability in our lives. Across multiple domains and perspectives, the writings in this volume consider what it means to live with disability in a purportedly inclusive and accessible Singapore.