4:29pm June 10, 2014

➸ Disability in Kidlit seeks disabled reviewers

alliecat-person:

disabilityinkidlit:

lappi:

disabilityinkidlit:

Disability in Kidlit publishes reviews of recent MG & YA novels featuring prominent disabled characters. Our reviews discuss both the technical and cultural accuracy of the disability portrayed and any stereotypes, tropes, implications, et cetera. What’s important:…

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME IS NOT ABOUT A CHARACTER WITH AUTISM

IN FACT I AM NOW DOUBTING THAT ANY OF YOUR AUTISM BOOKS ACTUALLY FEATURE CHARACTERS WITH AUTISM

Since the book was originally marketed as being about a character with Asperger’s, since his actual condition is unclear but does seem to be strongly inspired by autism, and since 95% of readers will walk away from the book thinking the character is autistic, we think there’s a lot of value in having the book reviewed from an autistic perspective regardless of what the author says about the character.

(In fact, I would actually very much like to see an autistic contributor tackle the trope of having characters with traits that seem strongly inspired by autism, but who are stated not to be autistic. In many cases—some authors have even admitted to this—it’s because the authors don’t want to be told they’re misportraying autism. In effect, they’re abusing “autistic traits” to create a quirky/mystical character without doing their research or positively contributing to the representation of autistic characters in fiction. I’m getting off-topic, though.)

The other books do feature autistic characters. It’s stated point-blank in several of the book descriptions. Some are written by autistic authors, to boot.

Curious Incident is supposedly not about an autistic character…yet somehow, he has every stereotypical trait in the book. It’s rather odd how that works.

I don’t know why this particular author has stated that that the character isn’t autistic, but I find it incredibly disingenuous. He even references popular theories of autism in the book, such as Theory of Mind, despite the dubious value of such “theories.” If the character isn’t supposed to be autistic, then why all the obvious references?

The cynical side of me is inclined to say that Haddon simply made up the “not-autistic” line after the fact after some people finally started realizing just how stereotypical and in some ways offensive the book is.

Besides, if one subscribes to the “author is dead” theory (which I generally don’t, but a lot of people do), then what the author says outside of the text doesn’t mean a damn, anyway.

I still regret the glowing review of Curious Incident I wrote in middle school. I knew an autistic woman who loved the book, and wrote a review about just how much Haddon got right. I was in a stage where I felt like I had to personally identify with every single thing any autistic person had written, or else I couldn’t be a Real Autistic. So I told my 8th grade teacher all about how great a book it was. She loved my review. But in retrospect, I’m… not really much like the narrator of Curious Incident at all.

That was Moggymania/Denise, right? I wish I knew what happened to her. I know she had a lot of medical problems, and an abusive mother, and severe Exposure Anxiety, and she vanished off the Internet and I’ve been terrified that the worst has happened to her, but I don’t know which “worst” it might have been, because there were so many possibilities for bad things happening to her in so many ways.

I know that’s sort of off-topic, but I remember how much she liked that book and the review she wrote, and I think about her a lot, but I never know how to find out if she’s okay. (Or whether she’d want anyone finding out if she’s okay. If she vanished due to not wanting to be seen, then it’s nobody’s business. If she vanished due to an abusive mother or death (including death-by-Kaiser-being-assholes-about-her-cecostomy), then I really want to know.)

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