Insert Witty Journal Title Here

Katharine Quarmby's top 10 disability stories

This is from the author of a new book, Scapegoat: Why We are Failing Disabled People.

That subtitle reads a little funny to me. Maybe it's the Us Versus Them of it.

Because of my bookfast, I can't read this book, or any of the books on the list (unless they happen to be in the house, which actually, several of them probably are).

I am puzzled as to why Gulliver's Travels is on there. The size difference is not related to a disability. Dwarfism and gigantism are not solely about size, there are often medical complications. And just.. yea.

"It's also interesting to note that there are fewer disabled characters in the canon nowadays, except in children's literature, where there has been a deliberate attempt to promote positive images of disabled children and adults, thanks to activists like Richard Rieser and Susie Burrows."

I'd say it's probably because it's gone beyond the careless use of disabled characters to 'I'd better not get it wrong and offend people, so I won't do it at all.' Except that I wonder what she's been reading? Because I can think of a ton of examples. And at least three of her examples are considered children's/teen books anyway.

Though I have to weed through my mental list to remove the children's books. (Odd. Why did I think Count Olaf had a hook? Was that one of his disguises?)

You can read most any of Bujold's books to find disabled main characters. Look at television and there's House front and center. And having just watched X-Men, there's Professor Xavier, and the whole extended mutant metaphor.

Blind characters make great superheroes and detectives, apparently. Deaf characters make great murder victims or witnesses. Characters on the autism spectrum (I know some have trouble with the label disabled on this one) are appearing more and more.

Then again, what's 'canon'? Maybe it's 'books everyone is supposed to read'.

Looking at my most recently read books, here's some:

Skyfall by Catherine Asaro - One of the main characters is epileptic
The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin - Main character is blind
The Colony by Jillian Weise - The book is pretty much about the main character's disability (a 'missing' leg + other stuff)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1960s) - Main character has mental retardation brought on by untreated PKU.

Those are all adult books, and only two are recent releases. But this is just my reading for less than 2 months. And while I might specifically read a book for the presence of a disabled character, that was not the case with any of these. Two were for Triple Take. One was because it made the Tiptree list, and the other was because I knew it would be awesome. I wasn't even aware there were disabled characters except for in Flowers for Algernon.

Now, it so happens that two of those are about disability. And all of these are generally positive portrayals, I think.

So, yea.. what have you been reading, Quarmby?

Other notable books I've read from this past year that would also qualify:

Among Others by Jo Walton
A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane (perhaps iffy)
Babel-17 by Samuel Delany (also perhaps iffy)
Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman
Mean Little deaf Queer by Terry Galloway (memoir)
Forest Mage by Robin Hobb (if obesity counts, which it does according to Quarmby's list)

The iffyness because there are autistic characters that have been in some way 'cured', and I'm not sure if it's been done well or not.

If I go too far back, I find books I barely remember, so whether they had disabled characters or not isn't something I can easily answer!

But you can tell most of those are sf/f, even if they are adult sf/f. So maybe those don't count as 'canon'.

ETA: If you were planning to read Never Let Me Go, then don't read the blurb they provide. It's spoilery. Similarly, if you click through to their original list of 10 and haven't read Ender's Game, also a complete spoiler! Since I haven't read most of the books, it's entirely possible there's other spoilers as well. So if you intend to read any of these books, safer to skip the blurb and move on.

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Flavorwire has just posted 10 Contemporary Books That Challenged White, Male Literary Dominance. And I was like.. yes, awesome.

Until I read the list.

Now I am just puzzled.

"Last week, we published a list of 10 essential books of the past 25 years. It was one of our most popular posts of all time, as well as one of our most contentious, racking up over 100 comments. Much of the argument has focused on the list's lack of diversity: of the 10 books, eight were written by white men."

So.. this is a list of 10 awesome books by people who aren't white men? An otherwise rather random list of them? Because that's what it looks like.

While Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale (which I was surprised to see, because I guess my concept of 'contemporary' did not encompass 25 years ago) does 'challenge' white male dominance in the world, in an outside-the-book kind of way, the world itself in the book is very white male dominated!

But Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro struck me as more about class than anything to do with gender, race, or national origin. Perhaps I'm mis-remembering.

So if the texts don't have to challenge the white male dominance, then the books are challenging them.. simply by being written by women (white or otherwise) or men of color? Um, well.. did you really need to make a top 10 list to prove the majority of the population on the planet is capable of writing good books?! The list didn't even confine itself to books first published in English!

Which just makes you have to question why so many American, Canadian, and British authors made it into the list!

I was originally going to look at the list and complain if there was no sf/f on it. I have a little trouble doing that because whatever Atwood says, her book is sf. And wherever Ishiguro's is placed in libraries and bookstores, it's sf too.

I dunno.. I just.. seriously? There were several approaches you could take to 'challenging' the 'literary dominance' of white males and I don't think this list reflects any of them.

* Books that actually challenge that dominance by exploring worlds where white men aren't dominant, or by subverting that. You know.. feminist or anti-colonialist books, though not limited to those.

* Books written by women or men of color that dominated the bestseller lists. Rowling or Meyer, anyone?

* Books by women or men of color who won the Hugo or the Nebula? (Ah well, pipe dream this. Because sf/f isn't 'literary'.)

* Books by women or men of color that appear on school reading lists? I know that would include Octavia Butler.

* Books that are really big with book groups? With or without the Oprah Bump.

I'm annoyed that this list doesn't have LeGuin or Butler or anyone else in the sf/f world who is a major, major player and who challenged the status quo just by getting their voice heard.

Even while another part of me thinks that was too much to expect.

I should stop reading these top whatever lists just because Shelf Awareness points me to them. They're all rubbish. :P

ETA: I was also wondering about this summary of Handmaid's Tale. "As a result, some are virtuous Wives while others are Handmaids, like the novel's protagonist, Offred, named for their male masters and forced to bear their children so the Wives don't have to." Don't have to? I thought they couldn't! Am I misremembering here? No, wait, that was girly of me. I know they couldn't! That was the whole point! (But if you really want to satisfy the 2% of my brain that isn't sure, could you confirm it for me? Thnx.)

Here's the list that's been compiled of mindblowing SF by women and writers of color, up over on tor.com.

I've read some of the stories on there. About a dozen at a rough guess. A working definition for me is.. science fiction that's so unlike other science fiction I've read that it's stretched.. something.

Well, blah, I'm not terribly awake and thus not terribly with the thinking and articulating bit. Anyway, worth checking out the list. I'll check out some of the stories I haven't read at some point. Still working on reading my way through the Hugo short story winners.