Stereotypes Surrounding Epilepsy in the Entertainment Industry
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.
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.
July has officially come to an end, and with it, the blog’s daily post schedule.
We’ve decided to continue Disability in Kidlit as an ongoing blog rather than a one-time event!
Disability in Kidlit will be undergoing some changes; a different posting schedule, update on submissions, and social media news.
Being autistic and also belonging to another minority might be one marginalization too many to sell children’s fiction informed by one’s own experience to a mainstream press, and that is a very sad thought.
A brief list of recommendations our contributors put together.
An exceptionalist narrative might, at first glance, seem like a positive or even empowering one. But, as it always goes when it comes to depictions of disability, the situation is much more complicated than that-
The “autism voice”—characterized by narrative devices and a detached character voice—tends to portray autistic characters as unworldly, hyper-rational blank slates defined purely by a series of unusual behaviors.
Here is a key insight to creating realistic autistic characters: We do not do the visibly autistic things we do because of “autism,” full stop. Like non-autistic people, we are responding to our experiences of the world. Those experiences simply differ from those of non-autistic people.
I was intrigued by the virtual-reality premise, but this book is a veritable hotbed of misogyny and a case study in how not to write a wheelchair-using character.