Disability in Fiction: A Case for Increased Advocacy in Fiction
I remember my Dad reading me Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in second grade. This new world of fantasy and fiction gave me the experience of a different life that cartoons could not provide. Afterwards, I impatiently waited for us to start reading the sequel Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. However, adult things like “working” got in the way and it was up to me to find out what the next Potter adventure would be. Thus began my obsession with the realm of fiction and fantasy. My parents teased me about taking books with me to Disneyland in 4th grade, and throughout middle school I was known as “that girl who’s always reading.”
This literally happened in science class, when I was sitting near the back of the room:
Middle School Kid 1: “blah blah blah Rachel blah blah blah”Middle School Kid 2: “Who’s Rachel?”
Middle School Kid 1: “You know, that girl who’s always reading in the corner?”Middle School Kid 2: “Oooh, yeah”
Over time, my love of reading fiction evolved into a passion for writing fiction, and I found myself writing my very first novel, Secrets of the Sea, a tale of pirates, zombies, seafaring adventure, and of course, a love triangle involving a prince. However, as much as I enjoyed getting lost in the world I was creating, one question constantly kept me wondering “What is the moral of my story?” I eventually decided it didn’t need to have a moral and could simply serve the purpose of entertainment, without real life implications. My reading spree unfortunately ended around sophomore year of high school, when the prospect of SATs and college applications drew my attention toward building my resume. One of the last books I read during that time was Graceling by Kristen Cashore.
Graceling is set in medieval times and had characters with magic powers. At the end (spoiler alert!) one of the main characters loses his eyesight in an accident. But … it was a good thing he had magic powers! Because even though he is now blind, his powers allow him to move around the world by sensing where things are, and pass through society like he isn’t blind. In fact, not even his family knows that he lost his eyesight — only his closest friends do.
In the ten years after, I slowly moved on to other books in the Graceling series, but it wasn’t until I read the third book in the series, Bitterblue, that the implications of this hit me.
It did not initially strike me that the inability to see was a disability at all. Nor did I really understand the implications of living with a disability and “fixing” it with the aid of superpowers in a fictitious world.
Even as I learned more about disability advocacy and inclusion in the past few years, none of these thoughts occurred to me until I read the Author’s Note at the end of Bitterblue, in which Kristen Cashore is transparent about the critique she received about Graceling under the lens of disability advocacy, and how this is a problem that is seen often through fiction/fantasy novels.
Cashore explains why her message was problematic in her blog:
“When I realized, late in the writing of Bitterblue, that I had disabled Po, then ‘magically cured’ him in a way that suggested, as book after book after book does, that a character can’t be both disabled and whole — that his story can’t continue happily until he’s cured”.
Cashore’s reflection made me realize that, regardless of the ‘point of the story’ or the ‘moral’, there are going to be implied narratives on society that I need to be mindful about.
The Problem With Superpowers + Disabilities in Fiction
The issue of magic powers solving the “problems” of having a disability happens a lot in fiction.
Upon doing more research in how disability is shown in fiction, I found an academic paper about how disability is often portrayed in literature. Read this excerpt from “Disabled Literature”:
“The dominant feelings held by nondisabled persons toward disabled persons are so very often sympathy, fear, or distaste; these reactions are often accompanied by avoidance or patronization. These terms also describe how disabled people are treated in American literature — that is, the subject of disability is avoided or the individuals are generally presented in a stereotypical, and often negative, manner. Disabled people are portrayed as helpless, super-abled (pure and good), or evil monsters. While these portrayals may seem unimportant — after all, literature isn’t “real life” — research has shown time and again that portrayals are extraordinarily important and influence culture(s) for decades and beyond.”
Having super powers make up for the problems that would be stereotypically expected by able bodied readers contributes to the narrative that people with disabilities are helpless on their own, without powers. Although it might not seem significant to authors while they are writing, or even to many readers, some people identify that the fact the disabled character needs superpowers to “overcome” their disability embodies stereotypes that do not reflect lived experiences.
This is a problem because, as the excerpt above explained “research has shown time and again that portrayals are extraordinarily important and influence culture(s) for decades and beyond”.
In a blog about disrupting disability stereotypes in fiction, English instructor Patricia Dunn explains the stereotypes that fiction might compound:
“when [readers] read books that feature characters with disabilities, what messages are they getting about disability? Does the story reinforce negative stereotypes (that disabled people are pitiable, helpless, evil, super human, magically cured at the end, or dead)? Or does the text challenge negative stereotypes in its depiction of characters with impairments by showing that they are complex individuals, that they enjoy their lives and are as “normal” as nondisabled people, and that they have agency and voice?”
Reflecting on Our False Narratives
It can be hard to identify the way that negative stereotypes have implied false narratives in how we individually think of people with disabilities because there might have been literature that we took for truth at a young age, and can’t remember. Now, what we can do is question what narrative the fiction we read is informing and question how that relates to real life, and the way we think of others.
The bias that we implicitly adopt from fiction can be expanded beyond disability; what does the narrative say about people of color? About gender? About age? By reflecting on the messages from how people are written about, we can become more comfortable with identifying false narratives and even help advocate for a better reflection of lived experiences.
Fiction Books with Disability Advocacy
If you love fiction and want to read books that do not compound disability stereotypes, here are some to check out!
This list includes both memoirs and fiction. Some of the fiction titles are:
- The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
- Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan R. Nussbaum
To be honest, it was hard to search for fiction with disability advocacy. However, another great place to find fiction books with less stereotypes is by reading from disabled authors.
A Note From my Editor
This is a note from one of my editors: Lucy Che. She added this as a comment at the end of my blog, and I couldn’t help but include it in her own words:
There is another genre that has pushed forward with inclusivity in characterizations very early in the game. That is….graphic novels! (ta-dah) aka comics. As you grew up with Literature, I grew up with comic books (long story short, censorship made it difficult for lots of books to make through *cough*) and have seen myself, not with superpowers, but with the people who struggled to learn and control their superpowers. My favorite character is Oracle whose alter-ego is Batgirl.
She had a run-in with supervillains, then got shot and paralyzed, then she developed another alter-ego of Oracle — a crimefighter with super computer skills (left picture: she uses a wheelchair and uses upper body strength to wield weapons). And, many other characters are disabled in comics (less portrayed in movies). My point is: disability in fiction needs more portrayal and analysis to make them relatable and different genres have different approaches with a wide range of success.
Every industry has their spaces for growth towards advocacy and inclusion, because regardless of the industry, there are going to be implications that people apply to their daily life, even if it is happening in a different world.
Sources
Kristen Cashore’s Blog Post: http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/2012/05/few-tour-questions.html
Patricia Dunn’s Blog Article: https://ncte.org/blog/2016/08/fictional-characters-disabilities-message-send/
List of Books with Disability Advocacy: https://lithub.com/8-books-that-move-disability-from-the-margins-to-the-center/
List of Books by Disabled Authors: https://bookriot.com/books-by-disabled-authors/
Academic Paper about Disability Literature: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/58432/574.pdf
