Interview with Marieke Nijkamp of We Need Diverse Books
We’re happy to have a chance to chat with Marieke Nijkamp—WNDB VP of finance, autistic author, and previous Disability in Kidlit contributor—about her work and autism in literature.
We’re happy to have a chance to chat with Marieke Nijkamp—WNDB VP of finance, autistic author, and previous Disability in Kidlit contributor—about her work and autism in literature.
In terms of disabled characters, what would our contributors like to see more of in children’s literature?
As much as I crave representation in fiction, it bothers me that some people seem to see autism as a way to create conflict or add a unique viewpoint to a narrative. It is even more disturbing when so many of these portrayals are inaccurate or incomplete.
The toughest chapter to write in El Deafo, by far, was the chapter in which I reject sign language.
For disabled characters, being cured is a common trope. What’s more, in most of these narratives, the characters are cured because they’re better than they were at the start of the book: kinder, gentler, braver. And finally, finally, they’re normal and whole.
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.
The notion of people faking disabilities is not at all new or novel–and, like many, many disability tropes, it’s a harmful one.
I’ve always wondered what it would’ve looked like to the outside world, this dance of ours. (Would we be pitied?)
A mistake I see a lot of writers who write about disability make is asking only one person for help. I’ve heard so many people say things like, “I have a cousin who is blind, and she read the book and said it was good at portraying blindness.”
We take a close look at the state of recognizable representation of visibly disabled characters on book covers.