Disabilities

[worldstosee]

This time around I'm looking for recommendations for books by authors with disabilities / characters with disabilities. In the case of characters - please try to only recommend a book if you really know for sure that the disability is portrayed well/accurately. Thank you.

Comments

[pandorasblog]

I've bookmarked this thread and will look forward to checking out peoples' recommendations. Do you intend people to add to it over time/to have it perma-linked somewhere as a resource? If so, I'll come back when I've tried a couple more books on my shelf, as I won't recommend them without having read them and found out how good the portrayals are.

Some recs:

A Different Life by Lois Keith. It's about a teenage girl who becomes disabled, and I identified with this so much in my own teenage years. It's very realistic about hospital experiences, emotional ups and downs, the way that peoples' reactions can be surprising in both good and bad ways, and the issue of access in schools.

The Spiral Cage by Al Davison is an autobiography in the comics medium, about the author's experience of spina bifida. It's a bit 'bitty' because it's less a single ongoing story and more a collection of reflections and experiences which had (as I understand it) previously been published separately. But it's interesting nonetheless. I should mention there's some nudity - not because I have any problem with that, but because I know that some people who are not habitual buyers of comics for adult readers may be surprised. For myself, I admire the frankness of the author/artist, particularly in a culture which would rather hide the bodies of disabled people.

[worldstosee]

Thanks for the recs!

Do you intend people to add to it over time/to have it perma-linked somewhere as a resource?

That's a good idea - linking it and using it as a reference. I posted this question because I'm considering doing a reading challenge for authors with disabilities (similar to the challenges for reading more books by authors of color). I made a post about the idea on my review blog, but haven't gotten far with the idea yet.