Featuring an excerpt from Kristin Cashore's blog about her newest novel Bitterblue
Ever since I read this post on The Rejectionist a few years ago, I've tried to be more aware of how people with disabilities are portrayed in the books I edit and the media I consume. I mused a while back on my own blog about Toph from the Avatar: The Last Airbender TV series, wondering if she fit the stereotype described by Rachel in that post, the "supercrip" stereotype. As Rachel, who is deaf, put it,
The most crucial error the Able-bodied Narrative makes is the proposition that the disability is the most important and most interesting thing in that person’s life. . . . Thinking of disabled people as being their disability ignores all the other things that make us fully realized and active human beings; our loves, desires, hobbies, thoughts, fears, hatreds, ambitions, and failures. It ignores the conflicts that have actual meaning to our lives and relationships—conflicts that contain within them the seeds of stories so much richer and deeper than the Able-bodied Narrative could ever allow for.
Instead, The Able-bodied Narrative defines people by their disabilities and results in stereotyped characters in predictable plots: the struggle to overcome our obvious suffering, the search for a cure or at least normalcy, and the inspiring greatness of the "Supercrip."
How do we approach the portrayal of people with disabilities in children's and young adult literature? Do we treat them as whole people, whose disability is just one part of who they are?*
