I’ve never written fiction about living with Crohn’s, and to be honest, I’ve never wanted to. Perhaps because I still feel what I felt for years growing up: that nobody wants to hear about my annoying, humiliating misery. Yet I know, intellectually, that this is a shame, because there should be more characters in YA literature who live with chronic illnesses like IBD.
In my experience, the disabled sibling in fiction exists purely to make the main character’s life more “difficult,” more “sympathetic.” Oh, that poor dear, the writers want you to think,
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.
Perhaps “normal” behavior is best described as a “normative spectrum.”
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.
I don’t remember the first time I was bullied, but I do remember the moment I finally realized that I had been bullied.
Autistic people learn, change, and cope like anyone else. However, when a character is autistic, many authors appear to see only one route for character growth: effectively making the character less autistic.
Hanna is a character with bipolar disorder; she’s not “bipolar disorder, the walking human diagnosis.” I think people who share the disease will find something soothing in seeing someone who both manages and mismanages her illness realistically.
People like Early do exist, and it’s great to see historical fiction that includes a disabled character, but Early gets a little too close to the trope of the magical or extra-special autistic for my comfort.
Although the process of coping with and accepting sudden blindness seems rushed, this is one of the best books depicting blindness that I’ve read. Natalie’s emotions and time at a school for the blind are spot-on.