On Voice, Autism, and Parrot-Ear
“How did you manage to capture that voice?” beta readers would ask. “How did you know to describe those particular feelings?” I was starting to have a few self-revelations about that.
“How did you manage to capture that voice?” beta readers would ask. “How did you know to describe those particular feelings?” I was starting to have a few self-revelations about that.
Tommy Smythe disappears one Friday night, and even after weeks of searching he can’t be found. This is the story of a rural community’s search for Tommy, and the complicated social networks created by wrongdoings and secrets in a small town.
Charlie Cooper is your average, down-to-earth girl—who happens to be disabled. But occasionally, this normalcy backfires.
Your Voice is All I Hear will familiarize readers with common symptoms, while normalizing schizophrenia as an illness like any other; however, it is obvious that this book’s target audience is not those with schizophrenia themselves.
Despite good ideas and wonderful writing, Brilliant falls flat when it comes to having any constructive meaning regarding depression.
Diversity in children’s literature is often represented as an either/or, without intersectionality; characters can either be autistic or gay, for example, or a wheelchair user or Black, but rarely both. Why is that?
I don’t remember the first time I was bullied, but I do remember the moment I finally realized that I had been bullied.
I wanted to write about a real girl with real emotions struggling in a world that too often is unforgiving to those who don’t fit the right mold.
These magical or futuristic “fixes” seem rooted in a discomfort with disability: many writers cannot (or don’t want to) imagine a life without sight and therefore create excuses to give their character equivalent sighted experiences.
Ever seen the Allstate commercial? “I’m a random windstorm. Shaky, shaky.” Well, sometimes that’s how life feels when you’re a kid with disabilities. Because I’m both very random and my life can be, well, pretty shaky.