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hekate24 's review for:
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
by Amanda Leduc
Read Harder 2020 Challenge: a book with a main character or protagonist with a disability (fiction or non)
Society in general has never known what to do with disability and/or chronic illness that will never get better. Some people are born with such conditions, while others (like me) have them strike late in life. I think the sheer randomness of it terrifies people and it's much easier to assume that the person involved must have some sort of moral failing to bring on such a condition. Amanda Leduc traces this assumption through the oldest version of fairy and folk tales. In those stories, disability is something to be overcome. Society never has to change itself to accommodate people with different bodies and/or minds. And this is a strain of thought that never disappears from all the retellings of fairy tales. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time, I'm sure.
Society in general has never known what to do with disability and/or chronic illness that will never get better. Some people are born with such conditions, while others (like me) have them strike late in life. I think the sheer randomness of it terrifies people and it's much easier to assume that the person involved must have some sort of moral failing to bring on such a condition. Amanda Leduc traces this assumption through the oldest version of fairy and folk tales. In those stories, disability is something to be overcome. Society never has to change itself to accommodate people with different bodies and/or minds. And this is a strain of thought that never disappears from all the retellings of fairy tales. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time, I'm sure.