Do your characters have disabilities? Enter the Sensitivity Reader
The Jovian Universe is populated with characters who have different strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and disabilities. Andrew, a special kind of Jovian, was born with a heart defect, which has passed to his granddaughter, Natasha; Max, an ordinary human, lives with attention deficit disorder; and Dmitri, an eleven-year-old hybrid boy, has an unspecified muscular deficiency that requires a wheelchair.
While I did some research on heart defects, and I know a lot about ADHD after raising a child who scored quite high on the Vanderbilt test, I don’t know a lot about disabilities like cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. Dmitri, one of my most endearing and lovable characters, plays a major role in my current novel, The Moon Children, toggling between bodily weakness and strength.
Would my treatment of this character upset someone who lives with disability? How realistic is my portray of Dmitri and his challenges within the science fiction world I’ve created?
I decided my forthcoming book, The Moon Children, could benefit from the knowledge and expertise of a sensitivity reader. That is, a person who has firsthand experience with similar disabilities and can let me know if what I’ve created works, and whether I’ve included anything that will offend readers, especially those who are disabled.
How did I find a sensitivity reader?
Plain and simple, I googled. I read websites. I emailed and asked questions. It didn’t take long to find a good, qualified reader.
What I Learned
When spelled out in this fashion, some of the items on the list that follows may seem obvious. When I first received feedback, I quickly realized that I had many preconceived notions about what life is like for a disabled person (specifically a wheelchair user). The sensitivity reader called out numerous details in my book that could potentially upset or offend readers.
Suffice it to say, I’m glad I hired this editor to provide me with a new perspective! Here are some of the many lessons I learned from her feedback.
+ Be careful not to present the disability as something negative that needs to be overcome or cured. Disabled people are accomplished, creative, adaptable people who can live full, happy lives.
+ A disabled person’s “normal” is being in their particular body. They do not view their body/disability as an annoyance to overcome.
+ Being disabled is not a tragedy. Avoid showing disabled characters in a pitiable manner. Instead, show the disabled person being powerful and resourceful.
+ Don’t use “the wheelchair” when you mean the character. For instance, don’t say, “Alex pushed the wheelchair” in place of “Alex pushed Dmitri.”
+ Disabled people do not like others to take it upon themselves to grab or handle their equipment.
+ If a character has a speech impediment, do not use phonetics to represent it. This is an “othering” way to handle a speech pattern. Instead, explain that the speech is impaired and allow readers to imagine it the same way they would an accent of some kind.
+ Be careful of characters who begin in a disabled form and become “cured.” This is a fictional trope that sends a damaging message to disabled readers, and about disabled people. In real life, many disabled people would not choose to be “cured,” though this is what non-disabled people assume they would want.
+ Along the same lines, when a disabled person becomes powerful when “cured,” it sends the message that they are not powerful when disabled.
+ It also implies that disabled people need to be “fixed” or “saved.”
Because I do not wish to perpetuate any damaging tropes or assumptions, I will be making changes to my book! I hope these examples are helpful to you and the disabled characters you have, or will, create.
