I need to write an essay for college on disability representation in a text, and would love to analyze a romance novel! Any type of disability, both physical and mental, are applicable! Thank you (also if it’s on the shorter side or an anthology, even better!) No graphic novels/comics please 🙂
by Spirited-Humor-6192
5 Comments
Check out the website Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. They review tons of romance novels, I’m sure searching with a few keywords would turn up some results.
Not a book but Rebekah Taussig (sitting_pretty) on ig writes incredible posts about her life with a physical disability. Including relationships and motherhood as a wheelchair user. (She does have a book too, which is amazing, but probably not what you want since it’s longer)
*Of Such Small Differences*, by Jo Ann Greenberg (deafblind man, sighted hearing woman, and since the author had been working with deaf(blind) people for decades when she wrote it, there is none of the creepy misconceptions/sadistic Mr Magoo fantasies that you might expect from a book on this subject released in the late 1980’s; it is one of the only blindbooks by an able-bodied writer that I would feel comfortable recommending to another person!)
Physical Disability:
– Sick Kids In Love by Hannah Moskowitz
– Get A Life Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Autism:
– The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
– The Mistletoe Motive by Chloe Liese
ADHD
– Fresh by Margot Wood
If you want just an average, typical, trashy romance novel? Wolf Signs by Vivian Arend. It’s a paranormal romance about werewolves. First in a series. None of the other books comment on disabilities or are trying to further an agenda. It’s just like all the other trashy werewolf romances, but the main character happens to be deaf in the first book.
It’s super short. 169 pages. Might be fun to analyze because the paranormal aspect helps gloss over the communication issues.
If you want something more respectable? Me Before You. I think they made it into a movie with the Game of Thrones girl. She’s a caregiver for a young rich dude in a wheelchair. The whole book is about coping with his disability. 369 pages though. Great beauty and the beast overtones.