YA books with disabled characters (crossposted)

[haddayr]

I am looking for some that aren't hateful, disablist crap that, for instance, say that a girl in an iron lung should want to die and we're all so relieved when she DOES die.

Anyone with a few good recos?

Comments

[pandorasblog]

And having now read that Disability Now article, it makes lots of excellent points but also makes some incredible mistakes. The one that most people will spot will be the failure to notice "Mad-Eye" Moody in J.K. Rowling, hardly a minor character and one I'd consider worthy of discussion, not to mention the various injuries and markings, not curable by a potion, which some characters pick up by the end of the series.

Excellent point - and now you mention it, there were a couple of other things that bugged me about HP being used as an example of there being no representation.

Firstly, when we meet Neville's parents, we learn in a very painful way that magic does not fix every injury or illness. And I actually thought there was a subtle and deliberate point being made by JKR: that people who can't be healed by magic end up in an institution away from public view, because wizarding society (especially in the context of Voldemorte, the Death Eaters etc.) is downright frightened by the idea that they can't magically fix injuries.

Now, if someone really wants to criticise HP for its poor disability representation, the place to start is with the Squibs... in a world where everyone is magical, being unable to do magic looks awfully like a disability. But the Squibs are figures of pity and fun, forever outside looking in, unable to be 'useful' members of society except in ways that would be considered strictly mundane/Muggle-ish: Argus Filch is the janitor, doing manual work in a society that looks down on it. And the books present this attitude to Squibs as being A-OK...

I tend to think that the article author has a cursory knowledge of HP based on the movies or general cultural referencing, rather than a fan's perspective on the series.

And re: Will's mum in The Subtle Knife:

Plenty of parents manage to do a sterling job of raising kids despite having mental illness, but there are also a serious number whose parenting is not as good due to mental illness, and I don't see why we should pretend that doesn't exist. That's not quite the same as the very valid comment that children's literature is heavily biased towards the negative side of disability when it shows it at all, and in many cases is more negative than is realistic.

YES. That bothered me, especially since the example used is actually very sensitively and realistically written. Are writers supposed to erase the experiences of children who grow up with an added sense of concern and responsibility for a parent with mental health issues, in order to depict a world where disabilities have no negative aspects?

I don't feel like portrayal of one experience should have to trump portrayal of another, and it is my opinion that culturally, young carers are erased as much as disabled kids... and that has intersectionality written all over it.

Earthsea - I have the Quartet on my to-read pile (um. bookcase.) and that intrigues me...

[elettaria]

Somehow I've managed to forget that the central character in the Earthsea books, Ged (Sparrowhawk), is mildly disabled, due to a tussle with the powers of darkness when he's an arrogant 15 year old that leaves him badly facially scarred, I think with a limp, and slower of study than before. It changes his personality, as a traumatic experience of that sort would, and in many ways he takes it as a learning experience, studying all the harder now that it's no longer easy for him (student wizard). It's roughly analogous to a teenager drunk-driving and getting injured in a crash, I think.

[pandorasblog]

Oh wow... that really makes me want to hurry up and read those books!