KosAbility is a community diary series posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and Wednesday by volunteer diarists. This is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. There are two parts to each diary. First, a volunteer diarist will offer their specific knowledge and insight about a topic they know intimately. Then, readers are invited to comment on what they've read and/or ask general questions about disabilities share something they've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about the unfairness of their situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered.
So, I had this idea: Do a diary on disability as it's covered in fiction. Combine two of my favorite groups here on dkos: Readers and Book Lovers and KosAbility.
I asked around. ulookarmless volunteered to co-host.
Various people suggested books (see below)
And you can add more.
How disability is covered in fiction is critical to how disabled people are treated and viewed in reality.
Suggested by plf515
Lincoln Rhyme novels by Jeffrey Deaver. These are thriller novels set in contemporary New York City. Lincoln Rhyme is the best crime scene analyst in New York, maybe the world. Years ago (before the series started) he was crushed by a falling beam, and is now a C4 quadriplegic, able to move his head, shoulders, the fingers of one hand and one finger on the other. And he’s still the best crime scene analyst in New York, maybe the world.
These are both good as novels (never mind the disability angle, you’ll keep turning pages) and because Rhyme is flat-out fascinating: Brilliant, cantankerous and NOT one to suffer fools, he also has an incipient alcohol problem and long relationships with his colleagues (including one love interest) and his
aide
Persistence of Vision by John Varley. A novella, and stunningly good. It’s the near future, in America. The economy is in the tank. The protagonist is wandering the west, seeing what he can see. He wanders into a commune where the residents are all both deaf and blind. And what he finds there is
amazing. Most highly recommended.
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon is a detective novel told from the point of view of an autistic boy who solves the case. I quite liked it, but it got a huge range of reviews from people on ‘the
spectrum’.
In More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, four people with a variety of disabilities find each other and become superhuman.
The short story Involuntary Man's Laughter by Spider Robinson, is about a man with Tourette's Syndrome.
From quarkstomper
Long John Silver and Blind Pew are examples in Treasure Island of characters disabled in naval battles but who were able to overcome their disabilites to a surprising degree. Okay, so they're both villains, and their disabilities are to a certain extent intended to be creepy; but Blind Pew is incredibly perceptive and Silver extremely agile.
Claudius in I, Claudius is afflicted with a terrible stammer and is considered a dunce by his family and the rest of the world at large, but he is highly intelligent despite his outward deficiencies.
And speaking of YA novels, one of the protagonists of the Three Investigators series had one of his legs in a brace in the early novels. It's been decades since I read them and I don't recall why. I seem to think it was not a permenant affliction, because he lost the brace later on. I know that in recent reprintings, the series has been revised somewhat, but I don't know what changes
were made to that character.
From limelite
Good idea. Does Nero Wolfe qualify? Is Monk a book character or a made for TV one? There's always Capt. Hook! And Capt. Ahab. Dickens often features disabilities of all kinds in his books; Tiny Tim ain't the only one.
I've also heard of a "movement" to include disabled character is Kid & YA fiction; I'm aware a blindness is used a lot. John Gardner ("Grendel") features a number of blind characters. As for deaf characters. . . http://www.amazon.com/....
Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin series: In "Master and Commander" young Midshipman Blakely loses an arm in battle, but becomes an invaluable assistant to Maturin and even gets temporary command. Surely, there must be more books by O'Brien and other sea-faring or war-
writing novelists who have heroes, even, with disabilities due to trauma.
Anne McCaffrey features disabilities extensively in her "Brain & Brawn," or "The Ship Books" series -- people whose genetic or perinatal problems that force them to become life-support cyborgs. Many, many in her books have limps, are blind, etc
Jean Auel 's "Mammoth Hunters" has a mute character named Rydag and in "Clan of the Cave Bear" the shaman is physically paralyzed on one side, yet is the smartest member of the clan.
"Havana Bay" by Martin Cruz Smith -- Erasmo is a bilateral amputee. Grace McLean loses her leg in "The Horse Whisperer," an excellent novel to use for the parallel disabilities of the girl and her horse (aptly) named Pilgrim.
Nevada Barr's "Hard Truth" features Heath Jarrod,
a paraplegic wheel-chair-bound woman who had been very active prior to an ice-climbing accident.
From dirkster42
I'd recommend looking at "This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies" ed. Hector Avalos.
From ulookarmless:
As a young boy in Australia I read a novel by an author named Marshall (don’t quote me on this, it’s a long time ago) titled “I Can Jump Puddles”. The premise was that he contracted polio very young before the vaccine was available. His disability got worse as he got older. The plot revolved around learning to cope with life around the farm and doing his school work. It made an impression on me then and I still remember it almost 60 years later.
Shakespeare was good at fictionalizing historical characters:
Richard III- the hunchback- “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse”
Ophelia- Hamlet’s mad sister
Lady MacBeth- and a host of other mad women with murderous intent
Caliban- the half human-half beast from the Tempest who always speaks in perfect iambic pentameter
Just to name a few
Jake Barnes- the impotent (castrated) narrator and central character in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”
The deranged sister in Tennessee Williams’, some say, autobiographical “Glass Menagerie”
Ken Kesey’s brilliant “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, the best novel I have ever read and a great movie to boot starring Jack Nicholson.
“Forrest Gump” by Winston Groom 1986. Novel better than the awful movie.
“My Left Foot” while not fiction is an autobiography by Christy Brown in 1954. He was born in 1932 and the book became the basis of the character played by Daniel Day Lewis in the eponymous movie.
My 15 year old son tells me that a Japanese manga features a superhero(ine) who is pregnant and has no legs. Guess that qualifies as 2 disabilities, albeit one only temporary!
In Douglas Adams’ “Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy, has two heads and three arms, now that’s what I call disabled!
from ellid
Miles Vorkosigan (crippling bone disease that's left him a fragile near-dwarf)
Tyrien Lannister from Game of Thrones (a genuine dwarf)
Gil Hamilton from Larry Niven's The Patchwork Girl (amputee/arm transplant recipient who's developed psychic powers to compensate)