Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw

June 15, 2023
A global disability rights advocate recounts his path to success. Ndopu's life as a "disabled achiever" demands he maintain a precarious balance between endurance and exhaustion, resolve and resignation, even as he is constantly asked to account for his own worth. While any thread of the author's story could fill an entire volume, the core narrative arc follows him to and through the hallowed halls--and cumbersome cobblestone paths--of Oxford University's Somerville College, where he made history as the first disabled Black man to earn a master's degree in public policy. Ndopu diligently recounts the many trials and tribulations of the intensive one-year graduate program, including head-slapping bureaucratic failures, infuriating systemic prejudices, and heartbreakingly misguided notions of philanthropy and assistance. "I was a disabled Black man," he writes, "and Oxford, the bastion of knowledge, was where I had sought validation, only to be met with condescension and the weight of unspoken expectations." Alongside his frank account of his many struggles--from navigating fire drills to dealing with the onerous health-and-safety guidelines for personal care aids and the financial burden of meeting his basic needs--Ndopu proudly shares his many triumphs, including his experience as a speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Throughout, the author clearly conveys the challenge of balancing "the daily grind of surviving ableism" and "the veneer of success." As he deftly shares his life story, he chronicles memorable moments of awe and inspiration as well as dismay and embarrassment at the persistent ways that ableism has made his rise so difficult. One of Ndopu's greatest strengths as an author is his ability to carry any reader as a collaborator and confidant without neglecting the appropriate indictments of the countless slights, assumptions, and micro- and macroaggressions that he faces. The text also serves as a powerful, personalizing context for Ndopu's advocacy work with the U.N. and other international organizations. An unflinching memoir of determined self-actualization.

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Starred review from June 12, 2023
In his sharp, illuminating debut memoir, South African disability rights advocate Ndopu chronicles his trials and triumphs as a disabled gay Black man enrolled at Oxford University. Diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, which weakens the body’s skeletal muscles, at age two, and not expected to live beyond age five, Ndopu defied all medical models. After graduating from college, he was accepted into the Master’s in Public Policy program at Oxford. Initially elated, Ndopu quickly settled into something more like optimistic ambivalence after he arrived at the university. Though he felt proud of receiving recognition from such a prestigious institution, he was an outsider among his able-bodied peers, dealing with a rotating cast of care aides and lamenting the school’s lack of accommodations for people with disabilities. Wryly detailing the costs and complications of his attendance at Oxford, Ndopu shines a light on ableism both conscious and unconscious (“Within a span of half a day, I’d been shuttled between care aides like a young person who’d fallen through the cracks of the foster care system, and now I was being prevented from using the bathroom,” he laments early on). This raw yet triumphant tale should be required reading. Agent: Bridget Matzie, Aevitas Creative Management.

July 1, 2023
Ndopu, an award-winning humanitarian and social justice advocate, was the first disabled Black man accepted into the masters in public policy program at Oxford University, and yet he has faced assumptions from the nondisabled and incidents of stripping him of agency. Growing up in Namibia, the assertion that he wanted to go to school put him on, as he writes, an "unimaginable trajectory." His mother fought to get him into a school that would accept him, and, as a teenager, he spoke numerous times in interviews to urge educators to provide schooling for children with disabilities. Written in a funny, accessible, and remarkable voice that will captivate readers, Ndopu's book will resonate with disabled and nondisabled readers alike. It includes discussions of his early struggles with queerness and coming out and the obstacles he faced as well as his triumphs. Sipping Dom P�rignon through a Straw is a vital window into not taking no for an answer and encourages disabled readers to pursue their dreams.

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