It wasn’t until I was an adult that I could finally understand that from the time of my diagnosis, my education was not going to be “complete,” because I did not have the full access I needed. It was as if intensive speech therapy and itinerant teachers were more important than having a sign language interpreter in my classes.
We’ve decided to continue Disability in Kidlit as an ongoing blog rather than a one-time event!
While I don’t think disability metaphors are sufficient disability representation, I do think that they’ll come up naturally in many stories, and that they’re relevant to the discussion of disability in SFF.
Authors must allow their depictions of epileptics to catch up with modern medicine, instead of disseminating ancient beliefs and clichés for the sake of drama.
The two or three months I managed to get by on the reduced dose were enough to convince me: My psychiatrist is lying. I don’t need medication. I’m fine. I can beat this. Until, of course, I couldn’t.
What was originally intended to be a one-month event has now reached its third birthday, and we could not be more ecstatic!
Since our founding exactly three years ago, we’ve built up an impressive bank of reviewed titles. Now, we’re making the search for good representation even easier.
A lot of people only see the bad sides of Asperger’s. What they don’t see is that it can have its perks, too. My entire career as an author—which is a very fun one!—is entirely dependent on this condition.
Bad depictions in popular culture foster the narrative of the lazy narcoleptic: They’re lazy. They’re late/unproductive/lethargic employees. They’re uncaring lovers or absent friends. And so on and so on.
Pete’s autism is portrayed over and over again as being non-stop pain and suffering. That got incredibly hard to read; do people really think this is what autism is like?