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The Real Narcolepsy
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.
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?
After the first two books in Jackie Morse Kessler’s Riders of the Apocalypse series—Hunger, about a girl with anorexia, and Rage, about a girl with depression—were so positively reviewed on the blog, we were incredibly excited to invite the author over for a joint interview.
After our rave review of Cindy Rodriguez’s debut When Reason Breaks—about two very different girls who are both dealing with depression—we were excited to invite both reviewer and author to the website this week to discuss the book further.
Writing about characters with mental illness can be challenging in various ways. How do you accurately convey a character’s state of mind, without compromising on clarity or excitement? How do you show a character’s skewed perceptions of the world?
Speculative fiction is work that focuses on difference, work that immerses us in it. But the choices we make when building a fictional world can reflect on the world that we live in now. So how do we worldbuild with disability in mind?
I’ve talked a lot about the ways my disability has affected my body image, my sexuality, my confidence, and my social interactions, and all of those things are important to consider when writing a disabled character. Today, however, I want to focus on the ways my disability affects the logistics of my life.
We have so few stories—especially lighthearted ones—with wheelchair-using characters that I’d hoped I’d be able to recommend I Funny, but it’s a dangerous narrative wrapped up and presented as “good messages.”
Although the book was fun and interesting in places, the disability aspect was very much a freak-show presentation of disability and the disabled experience.
Queens of Geek is an authentic and refreshing portrayal of an autistic and anxious girl.