In disability fiction, distance lends us not only drama, but intimacy.
Today's screens are full of minds that think and perceive differently, which makes this the right moment to look back at how twentieth-century American writers drew readers toward cognitive disability. Their tools were narration, vision and time, and a kind of intimacy that does not depend on getting inside a character's head. One of the most-read novellas in American schools shows how repetition itself becomes the foundation of the story.
Engaging Minds: Cognitive Disability and American Storytelling, 1899–1953