#disabled lit

Happy Disability Pride Month!

warning: this is an angry rant of a review.

I just gave up on Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman after about 50 pages (for context, the book is only about 110 pages). I hate it. I hate it more than I have ever hated a book I’ve read before. I usually donate books I don’t like, but this one is going directly in the garbage bin because I don’t want to pass it on to another reader. 

Let me tell you a little about this Pulitzer Prize (?!?!?!) winning book. It was published in 2000 but that is recent enough that it doesn’t get a pass on ableism.

The book is narrated by fictional 14-year-old Shawn, a boy with cerebral palsy who is unable to control his movements, speech, etc., and therefore the people around him think he is essentially a “vegetable” and “r-slur” (a word frequently used throughout the book, and apparently okay with the narrator and his family, though the author does denounce it in his afterword). Shawn’s father is a famous writer who gained his fame by writing a poem about how Shawn’s birth and consequent disabilities effectively ruined his life and marriage. Shawn believes his father is planning to kill him, which his father thinks will “put him out of his misery”. 

Shawn’s thoughts / narrations in the book range from descriptions of his life and family, which I’ve mentioned above, to juvenile mentions of staring at women’s breasts when they’re near him, to boasting about his perfect memory that no one can know of, to describing how he is transported out of his body during seizures (which he enjoys??) and has these lucid visions in which he can walk, talk, etc. Like, I’m sorry, but from what orifice is this author spewing this bullshit from and why did people think it so groundbreaking as to win a literary award?

How interesting, you might think, that the author of this book has a son with very similar conditions to the main character. You might think he would use this to his advantage and access resources about disability education and advocacy in writing this book, but nowhere in his acknowledgements or afterword does he mention anyone of the sort. To put the icing on the cake, the first people he thanks in the acknowledgements are his “family, who I couldn’t write this without: [wife’s name] and [abled son’s name]”. No mention of the disabled son who inspired the entire book. None. That alone makes me angry - who cares if your son won’t read the book? You can’t even mention him in your dedication that includes your family and dozens of other friends and colleagues?

Happy Disability Pride Month!

Happy Disability Pride Month!

Happy Disability Pride Month! 📚📖♿️ Full titles under the cut

I did also consider including House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski because it was a 5 star read and had multiple disabled characters, but I wouldn't call it good representation. In fact, I'd call it actively ableist, so it was excluded.

Happy Disability Pride Month!!! 📚📖♿️ Full titles under the cut!

Happy Disability Pride Month!

I didn't realize when I was compiling the list just how many second chance romances were here