We have to ditch the 'disability-villainy tropes' that persist in fiction

British author Jen Campbell is a disability rights advocate, award-winning poet and bestselling author of 14 books.

She's also a Booktuber, talking about books on YouTube, including deep dives into the history of fairytales and the representation of disabilities through stories.

Her latest work is an anthology called Owning It: Tales from Our Disabled Childhoods, which she's co-edited.

Books like it just weren't around for her to read as a child, she tells RNZ’s Saturday Morning.

“When I was a disabled kid, I got asked all the time, 'What happened to you?' People want answers, and it's frustrating to feel like you have to supply an answer to that intrigue all the time and be reduced to your disfigurement, your disability or whatever.”

Campbell has ectrodactyly, which means she has missing and misshapen fingers.

Her contribution as a writer to the book is the chapter 'Lobster Girl'.

“In the Victorian freak shows, there were people who had ectrodactyly who were called lobster children, and in my piece, I'm thinking about, or talking about, being at school and loving being at school, but never ever talking about the amount of time I used to spend in hospital outside school.

“I don't really know why that happened. I don't think I was told that that was something I shouldn’t be doing, but I found it very difficult to bridge that gap between home life and school.”

Disabled children seldom see themselves portrayed in any positive sense in fiction, she says.

“If you don't have that as a child, there's that phrase you need to see it to be it, and books are windows to see inside ourselves but also to look outside in the world and understand our part in it.”

Characters with disabilities are represented, but in very reductive ways, she says.

“There is a huge disability-villainy trope. If you think of James Bond villains and facial disfigurement and disability being used as a metaphor to tell the reader or the watcher that this person is 'bad'. It's lazy writing, but it is a literary device it's been around forever, so people cling to it quite dearly.

“Or seeing disabled people as inspiration, they've overcome their disability, they're doing things despite their disability, they are being calm and carrying on and all of that, and that's also quite toxic, it reduces disability to be something that is almost a tool for non-disabled people to feel better about themselves.”

While disabled characters and voices are starting to “trickle” into children’s stories and literature more widely, stubborn tropes persist, she says.

“I mean it's 10 years ago now, I think I was asked to be on a TV dating show called Too Ugly For Love where they were going to pair up disabled people and film it.

"I mean, I was in a long-term relationship with my now husband at the time and just got this email because the television production company had found me online as a disabled person who says things about disability and assumed ‘oh, she must be single.’ Which is not the point as to why I didn't want to be on the show, but it's just so reductive some of the storytelling around disability.”

She loves, but has a complicated relationship with fairytales, she says.

“There are many tropes in fairytales, and often the way people look is a marker for their character in a fairy tale.

“So a wicked witch is often described as ugly, for instance, and if people are bad, then they may be disfigured as a punishment, for instance or someone if they're good might be magically healed.”

But re-writing them can be a vehicle for subversion and education, she says.

“If you can tap into someone's nostalgia for fairytales and present them with a new version of the tale where, for instance, the hero is disabled or maybe queer for instance you're not only presenting that new version of a fairy tale which they thought they knew, but you're asking them why they haven't read that tale before.

“So it's interesting as social commentary, and also just subversion is fun as a writer, and I have loved writing new versions of fairy tales myself.”

She got her start in literary life as a bookseller, which inspired one of her first best-selling books Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops.

One of her favourites came from a young CS Lewis fan, she says.

“I remember once a young girl came into our bookshop, and she was called Imogen, and she pointed to a bookcase, and she asked if she could get to Narnia through there, and I explained I was very sorry but she could not get to Narnia through there.

"And she said that's ok, our wardrobe at home doesn't work for getting to Narnia either, dad says it's because mum bought it at Ikea.

“I just love that so much the idea that this Swedish furniture company is deliberately making non-magical furniture so the children cannot go to Narnia.”