I highly recommend Rage for anyone with depression, who wants to learn about depression, or anyone who just enjoys a good story. It’s moving, it’s clever, and despite its fantasy elements it’s incredibly realistic.
Wonderstruck is wonderful. It is, to date, the most creative and ambitious novel about the d/Deaf experience in America I’ve ever come across.
This book portrays its autistic protagonist in ways that will give readers negative, incorrect, and in some cases abusive ideas about autistic people.
Paperboy is only one character’s experience of stuttering, but it’s an honest one. And in a world where so often these stories aren’t told, that comes across like a breath of fresh air.
Queens of Geek is an authentic and refreshing portrayal of an autistic and anxious girl.
That’s the thing about disability, I think. You’re a normal person, you experience normal things, and then, every once in a while, you hit that wall. That reminder that you aren’t quite like the majority of your peers.
A poster child, to me, is a child with a disability who is “shown off” as a way to generate funds, awareness, understanding, more funds. Mostly funds, in my experience.
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.