The Paradox of Disability in Publishing & Everywhere

The Paradox of Disability in Publishing & Everywhere

I’ve been trying to write this for six months. I hope it doesn’t come off as too entitled…My inner critic will keep me in check. She went to catholic school. 

        I’ll start with saying I threw a woman with a disability out of her seat at the movies. I’d do it again. My friend thanked me. Some people might have cheered. I don’t remember. I was very indignant, so was she, but I had the armed guard on my side. 
How could you do that? She was like that poor kid with the allergic reaction on the plane !
She wasn’t. In fact I think she was the opposite….

     She, and her boyfriend who was willing to move, were in disabled seating. They appeared to be able bodied. I asked them if they wouldn’t mind moving.  There were other seats available merely a few rows back. They were just up some stairs.        

     The woman said that she had a right to be in the seat because she had a gluten allergy. My friend was in a disability scooter. I have a severe limp.

  Let me fast-forward to a good experience. I went to comic-con this past year. I was so happy to see that there were three panels that talked about disability in geek culture. I was extra happy to see the organization We Need MoreDiverse Books (WNMDB) had their own panel. 

       I was hoping that there would be one person on the panel with a disability. There wasn’t, but everyone was great. I wouldn’t take any person off that panel for anyone else.  

        At the panel Lee & Low books was offering a special publishing contest to minority writers. I wanted to enter the contest, but it was only for writers of color. Lee & Low supports and recognizes disability as a minority. 

            The publisher explained that they are a small company and if they opened up the criteria any wider it would be too much for them to take on. She was absolutely right. I understood, and I still do understand.

     So, this is yet another passive-egressive blog about how you're not included ? Another self-involved millennial Gen-Xer! You want to push people out.

            This is another example of how complex disability is and why it gets left out. Speaking of pushing people out I go to Whole Foods--

Whole Foods? You're going to complain about Whole Foods?
No, but I go to Whole Foods sometimes because something happened at another store.  An able bodied woman jumped out of her car and started screaming that I was “a stupid bitch cunt face” because I stole her handicapped spot. She had a handicapped placard.  She literally tried to push me out. Once she realized she was screaming at a woman with a limp she literally ran away.

 I wanted to go to a disability city meeting to possibly talk about the abuse of placards. The entire city meeting was going to be taken up by people who have scent allergies. They were going to try to ban people who work for the city of Berkeley from wearing scented products. I didn’t go.

       So now you're back to picking on people with non-visible disabilities?

  No, I back to talking about the complexity of this issue. I know scent allergies are real, so are other allergies. I just don’t believe in dictating what other people do with their bodies. 

             I get easily startled. It’s part of my disability. I wouldn’t go to a city meeting and demand that all city employees speak in whispers. I do believe that demanding too much of others takes away from the disability movement greatly. It causes disability to not be truly included in diversity causes.           

Do you really need to be in with other minorities Whole Foods lady?
            Not all the time. Lee and Low chose to leave out disability from this one publishing deal and I don’t blame them. WNMDB also often leaves out disability in their surveys, tweets, and studies. I understand this too, but I wish they wouldn't.  

            WNMDB often refers me and others to another wonderful and hard-working organization: Disability Kid Lit.  Disability Kid Lit is wonderful, but they don’t have the pull that We Need More Diverse Books does.

            They don’t get the articles written in Salon. Most major articles written about needing more diversity in publishing don’t include one line about people with disabilities. I understand. Disability is so messy. Any person can claim to have a disability. Especially writers. We’re all depressed or have some PTSD or at least middle school was hard.

            But there is “hard” and then there is “under-privileged” hard. The U.S. census and the Disability World Health Organization  reports people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed and sexually abused than any other minority group. Gluten allergy woman was loud about her rights as a person with a disability. You might see her or other people with disabilities being loud at the movies. 
However, our voices are less likely to be heard than any other minority group in major media.  Diversity in YA reported YA books we have the absolute lowest number of published authors. We have the least number of characters. This means people with disabilities are less published than even authors of color, and, there are less characters with disabilities than of color. 

            I have been silent for too long! Demanding inclusion. Just like the parking lot woman.

 I am not demanding inclusion. I’m hoping for more.
            People with disabilities share all the burdens that Paula Young Lee wrote about in her recent Salon article on ethnic minority representation of characters in literature. In YA a kid with a disability either ends up with a miracle cure or dead. Ava Jae did a great job of writing about that here. 

            Does gluten-allergy-woman have a right to say she has a disability?  Of course. 

            Is she entitled to services? Yes. She can have all the services she wants, AS LONG AS THEY PERTIAN TO HER ILLNESS AND DON’T TAKE AWAY LIMITED SERVICES FROM OTHERS WHO NEED IT.

I know people with severe dyslexia. They are part of the disability minority, but they would never take my physically disabled seat away. I would never take their dyslexic scholarship away, even though I have slight dyslexia.

            Does gluten-allergy-woman have a right to say that she is an oppressed minority? What if she writes a book? Isn’t she a part of the diverse voices that aren’t heard?

             She has a right to say and write whatever she wants. But, I believe this is the reason why disability is often left out. Disability is hard to define. 

            What service and opportunities people with different disabilities receive is even harder to define. I think it’s much easier to just say “yes, we include disability in diversity too,” and then never do much about it.  

         Say Lee & Low did open their publishing deal to people with disabilities. I wonder how many people with gluten allergies would have applied claiming to be an author with a disability, when their book was a re-telling of Hamlet in space with horny teens, one of which had a gluten allergy.

            Portlandia did a skit on the “temporarily disabled” and they nailed it. Their two most entitled characters got sprained ankles. After this they wanted to have all the “benefits” of disability. They also wanted to take over the disability movement.

             The skit showed people with permanent and significant disabilities kicking them out of the movement. I think the group was played by the real Disability Group in Portland. The woman in charge of the group defined what disability was with-in the group.  She explained why the temporarily disabled yuppie-hipsters (yipsters?) couldn’t be a part of the group. Then, of course, the yipsters started their own temporarily disabled group and claimed to be more oppressed.

People with all types of disabilities deserve services too. Who are you to judge?
They deserve appropriate services. Someone has to judge.   99.99% of all organizations are run by able-bodied people (cities, movie theaters, literary agencies…) I’m sure able-bodied people find defining disability difficult. People are going to be left out, and angry about it. Able-bodied people may feel that they have no right to define what disability is.
 Maybe even some people with disabilities aren’t as brave as the woman in the Portlandia skit. They don’t want to kick anyone out.With people like the white gluten-allergy-woman being so loud about her rights you can see why people with disabilities are often left out or not given as much time in diversity movement. 

 Maybe you are  a person of color that has only had experiences with people with disabilities who were like this woman, someone who wanted to have something they didn't have a right to. If that has been your only experience with people with disabilities I would encourage you to seek out others. If you find me, or this post entitled, know that there are people with disabilities you won't feel that way about.       

          So what would make you happy?

             I  hope people can be brave in their organizations. I agree with Lee here in the case of diverse novels. You know when someone is pandering or trying to “cash in” on diversity. Publishing companies should know when someone is pandering.

             In the case of publishing, if you aren’t sure if an author or a book is truly on the up and up with disability you can always ask the people at Disability Kid Lit. For example they might say: Tara Caimi who wrote Mush: from sled dogs to celiac, the scenic detour of my life  is a book written by a woman with celiac disease and about it. It fits disability criteria. 

            A book like The Magicians by Lev Grossman, which has themes of depression and mental illness but is mostly about struggling with academia and magic wouldn’t be considered part of disability diversity. 

Are you saying...

No one has claimed The Magicians is a disability book. Lev Grossman suffered from depression but he has never claimed to be a minority. I just didn't want to give a link to an actual book that claimed to be about disability but people said wasn't. 

            But Aren’t you just as bad as the parking lot or gluten allergy women? WNMDB is about people of color. Aren’t you trying to push your way in to something you have no right to?
     The We Need More Diverse Books movement has said it includes people with disabilities as well as LBGTQIA people. I know there are going to be times people with disabilities don’t belong, but please try to include it. 

 So what are you trying to say in your whining and tales of woe?
  I think the most important thing I want to say is this:

            Every organization that wants people of diverse voices to be heard MUST define what disability means clearly in that organization. I’m talking about books and publishing because that is what I’m doing now, but this also included work places and schools…places where it won’t be easy.

            If this doesn’t happen disability is going to get left out. It’s going to be officially included but really not included. You have every right to only have an organization that is only concerned with racial and ethnic (or LBGTQIA) issues. However if you really want to talk about diversity as a whole you must include disability (and LBGTQIA .) You then must define disability. Otherwise we’re going to be left out, and I think we could be stronger together.  

            All I’m asking for is more disability representation.  In the case of diversity in literature: when you write a Salon article and are including all people of color include at least ONE book with disability. When you post statistics include statistics on disability.  When you are hiring diverse staff also think of disability… Maybe invite one person with a disability on a panel. Don’t take away a seat from any of those people. Just include another seat. It could be a person of color with a disability.  Please don’t just refer people to DisabilityKid Lit. Use Disability Kid Lit in your own work! Also, go to Disability KidLit as they are looking for people of color who have disabilities.

            Have the courage to define what disability is in your agency.  I think we are often left out because people fear they are opening up seats that might be taken by people that don’t belong there. Some people might get left out. I might even be left out if a group decided to only define disability in a certain way. But, in the long run what you are really doing is letting people with disabilities in.

             Should you get back to actually writing your book?

             

            

The Search for Magic in A World of Different Costs: The Magicians TV & Book Series

The Search for Magic in a World of Different Costs

The Magicians, is Harry Potter College for the tortured soul. The author of The Magicians, Lev Grossman, was once a tortured grad student. So was I.

            I was so happy when I got into my graduate program. I picked up my whole life in order to go. Once in school I was miserable, but like a bad relationship I couldn’t leave it. There was no way I wasn’t going to like The Magicians book series. It was the rebound I needed from years of academia abuse.

            I loved The Magicians more than grad school, but it was also like a bad relationship. The Magicians was a better bad relationship where I stayed out of love rather than fear. I loved the word-building and the pacing. The course and actions of the main characters broke my heart. So, of course, I had to watch the show.

            Here is the set up: The main character, Quentin, (Q) is accepted into Brakebills. His best friend, Julia, is not accepted into Brakebills. Of course, Q has been in love with Julia forever. He also has the worst case of Entitled Nice Guy Syndrome (ENGS) for her I have ever seen.

            Q is a depressed smart white boy. Mostly because his academic achievements have left him feeling hallow. No one cares how smart he is. No one wants to talk about the things he wants to talk about as deeply as he does.

            The TV show displays this in one well-executed party scene. Q gives up trying to explain to people why the Danish version of a movie is better. He goes to his room and reads his childhood fantasy novels.

            Julia enters the scene where he is hiding. She gives him the friend-zone lecture of how he should try to connect with people. In both the book and the show Julia is not just your typical Jennifer Love-Hewitt coveted love object. Julia is also smart. In fact, she is even smarter and more completive than Quentin.

            However, as a smart girl, Julia doesn’t expect the world to fall at her feet. She realizes being smart is work. Of course, she is still magazine beautiful. She still has a boyfriend, James. He is not an asshole. He’s actually also fairly smart and kind. The Magicians is more trope twisting than it is trope smashing.

             In the book James is destined to go to an Ivy League college along with Julia and Q. In the show he is already at said college with James and Q. They are getting ready to go to Ivy League graduate school now. Because, if you are super smart and want fulfillment in America today- it can’t happen without graduate school.

            It’s not just graduate school that tears Q, James, and Julia apart. It’s magic graduate school. Because we all know graduate school is really magic. It has to be. It keeps us from crap office jobs with no safety. It costs six figures and promises to give us less crappy office jobs with some safety. When we get in we feel our lives are set. It is the only way we can be taught magic, but there is a price. So why do we do it?

             Some might think that the answer is money. Those people haven’t been to graduate school in twenty years. The same millennials and Gen-Xers that fight and claw at each to get into school continue on to non-paying internships. They have loans that last decades. The answer can’t be money. Everyone thinks they are going to beat the student loans and be a giant in their field. But, that isn’t really about money. That’s about wanting a magical life.  

            In The Magicians, Brakebills seems to be the only game in town for a magical life.  Q gets in. Julia doesn’t. Brakebills attempts to erase Julia’s memory. It is a kindness they do for all potential students that fail the admissions process. Because who wants to know the potential of a magical life they can’t have?

            Julia, that’s who. She literally uses pain to remember her Brakebills experience. Her boyfriend James doesn’t even get tested. He doesn’t even get to know about Brakebills. Its existence and the existence of true magic are secret.            

            Why wouldn’t perfectly smart chosen-boyfriend of Julia not even get a chance? Answer: because he’s too perfect. He has no true struggles.

            On the show, one of the most dynamic characters is Brakebill’s student Elliot. He’s gay and comes from a rural town with a pained past. Elliot is brought to three dimensions well by actor Hale Appleman. Elliot claims that Brakebills doesn’t tell you the real secret that magic doesn’t come from talent, but pain. So, where are all the minorities? Just like real grad school most of them aren’t at Brakebills. Brakebills specializes in the pain of over-achieving rather than adversity.

            It isn’t money that Juila or Q are after. It’s magic and an end to pain, the very pain that may give them their ability. Like a lot of depressed/obsessed over-achievers a Magician can easily have money and success. Yet, they end up steering away from it. The characters aren’t motived by the desire for success. They’re motivated by a desire to be the best, to have knowledge, and then adventure.

             They wanted to win, to pass the mysterious test. To be deemed not just good, but elite by other elites. After a life of pain it is the only thing that will fill the hole inside of them. After that adventure will surely follow. Really, why else would anyone go to grad school? But what do you do when you don’t make the cut and you are a stubborn bitch Julia who wants to remember magic is real?

            Julia asks Quentin, her best friend, for help.  Julia can’t very well “go to Yale knowing this place exists.” Q choses to do nothing to help Julia. He says his help wouldn’t do any good anyway. He is only a lowly grad student at the mercy of his school.

            Q’s Entitled Nice Guy Syndrome (ENGS) rears its ugly head in such a brilliant and insidious way. It shows the ripple affects of privilege. Julia’s main vagina-block to magic isn’t Q’s ENGS. It’s Brakebills not accepting her.

            Currently in the show the battle-of-the-sexes is playing out like this: Julia challenges Q for not helping her. Q calls her inferior for not getting into the school. Alas, he gets to feel justified because in his eyes she is acting inferior. His Brakebills (Ivy League) friends tell him so.  She is stealing books from his school, after all. She is hanging out with hedge witches (self-taught DYIers.)  She is making very questionable decisions chasing magic.

            The hedge witches are all ages, races, and levels of ability. Brakebills is mostly white. There are no older students, and one student with a disability. She was only a minor character in the book. I’m not holding my breath that she will show up in the show.

            But, the hedge witches are no pagan love-circle. They are like any group after power that they are denied. Not always good. Not really safe. The most ruthless have risen to the top. 

            In order to be find magic Julia has to do some questionably ethical things. She’s locked in a room, get sexually harassed, and deals with manipulative girls that pretend to be her friend. That’s no paid-for magic school. In fact, that sounds exactly like a bad office job. So, naturally, Q’s calling Julia inferior, and admitting he was indeed angry he didn’t get sex, pushes her over the edge.

             Julia is made to feel responsible for all of her choices. Yet, Q is protected by Brakebills from real-life consequences of his actions. Currently on SyFy, Julia isn’t the only one suffering. Q is still suffering. People do suffer in grad school. People die, but, this seems par for the course at Brakebills. Q does care, but his biggest fear is that he will be kicked out of Brakebills and end up cut-off like Julia.

             So, what happens if you get kicked out? In episode four we learn some of the backstory of Marina, “top-bitch in New York,” and head of the hedge witches. Episode four is a thoughtful departure from the book. Julia decides to make a decision to use magic to actively hurt Q after his abandonment. She makes Q think all of his Brakebills experience was a hallucination and that he is in a mental hospital. Julia does this spell trope spell under the direction and influence of Marina.

            Yep, they get their mental hospital magic-is-fake episode out of the way by number four. It is brilliantly trope twisting and written by the Grossman himself. What the TV show has done with the deepening of the character of Penny, played by the talented Arjun Gupta, has helped the fullness of the story greatly. Also, OMG Taylor Swift musical number! How can you not love it? Side-baring that, let’s look at who engineered the spell, ex-Brakebills student Marina.

            Marina is an angry girl, kicked out of Brakebills three months before graduation. The Brakebills faculty erased Marina’s memories and knowledge of magic. She had to build them back up from nothing.  We don’t yet know what Marina did to be kicked out and her memories taken.

            It may be worse than sleeping with a professor and indirectly getting another student killed. Another student did this and she was given a cushy do-nothing job with a huge salary. It may be worse than what Q did, which was accidentally calling up a murderous beast, which crippled the dean and killed faculty, but the difference was he did the best thing you can do in grad school. He didn’t get caught. Or maybe the Brakebills staff just really wants Q in there school because they know something we don’t.

            Chances are that whatever Marina’s offenses were they didn’t serve the greater cause of the University of Brakebills.  Like most grad schools, Brakebills true goal that isn’t in its mission statement. One of the strongest things about the show is we are aloud to see what others in power may be thinking outside of Q and Julia. We get to really see how Q and Julia are cogs in a plan.

            Brakebills has plenty more to worry about than its individual students and cast-offs. It is literally saving the multiverse from a beast. The dean is fighting the good fight. He has paid the ultimate price in fantasy fiction. He has become physically disabled.

            He’s played by the understated, commanding, Rick Worthy. He instantly became my favorite character, when he said no one really has control over anything.  Because if it’s one thing people with magic, disability, and pain know- it’s that you don’t have control over anything, but you have to keep working your grand plan to save the multiverse, right? Even if that means making your school elite.

            In fact, you probably have to put diversity and fairness on the back burner for the larger cause. You have to work to keep magic away from dangerous people. But, when you deny people the right to knowledge and magic aren’t you just making more dangerous people? When an institution denies people of abilities its knowledge several things will begin to happen: People will turn against each other. People will find other ways to get that knowledge. Over time, if the institution gets too myopically focused it will crumble.

            Most grads schools don’t want to save the world. Most are either worried about their bottom line or staying elite. While schools are battling that beast and students with in it look for their larger purpose you have to wonder where the magic is. It turns out it is on SyFy, and we should all watch The Magicians to see who gets it.   

             

What People should know about me and this blog:

1) I am a mother with a physical and learning disabilities. 

2) I am slightly dyslexic. I am busy. I stopped doing this blog because checking the posts for perfection took to long. Now I've decided- F that noise (ableist rhetoric)  There will be misspellings and typos.

 A) If you are the kind of person that finds these errors too distracting you have every right not to read the blog.

B) If you feel that such errors make me not intelligent or make my points invalid you are wrong and ableist. 

C) Yes, I believe in good clear writing. I am a published author and work hard to make my stories readable and error free. However, my errors, that I work hard to fix, or my errors on this fast and hard blog may throw you off, but they do not mean I am not a good writer or have no right to be writing. 

D) The above doesn't make me apart of the Trump/Palin movement or the anti-science/anti-facts movement AKA the "don't oppress us for being willfully ignorant, not bothering to check our facts, we think we are so cool we don't bother with critical thinking, reading, speaking or feeling" people. I'm just not good at spelling. I also leave out words and can't tell if I have. This isn't the same as thinking whatever crap I poop out is awesome.    

3) I am aware that writing: “person with a disability” is the correct term for obvious reasons.
However, as I’m writing this as a rushed mom I have chosen to sometimes write: “disabled person,” like they do across the pond. As a "disabled person" I can get away with this. I don't feel non-disabled people can. 

3)  I try to be aware of all my privilege. I am white and queer, but I’m married to a man. A white man who works in the tech industry. Despite this, I love him a lot.  As most people with disabilities I have 

A HUGE mountain of debt. However, due to the support of those around me I have never truly lived in poverty. I am LUCKY. 

4) I know I benefit from white privilege and middle class privilege. I try to be aware of all my privilege. Sometimes I fail.