seanan_mcguire (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seanan_mcguire) wrote2012-05-09 01:37 pm
seanan_mcguire) wrote2012-05-09 01:37 pm
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When the music stops, the rest is silence.
I've spoken before about how much I read, and about how much I seek for representation in fiction, both for myself, and for the sake of the people that I care about. How much it hurts when you're the token, or invisible, or the person that doesn't exist. How hard it is to accept that somehow, often through no fault of your own, you're the sort of person who doesn't get to be the star of stories, or even a major supporting character. And about how wonderful it is when that somehow, against all odds, you open a book and see yourself, or your friends.
Yesterday, I read Silence, by Michelle Sagara. She's a fellow DAW author, a sweet, smart lady, and an all-around neat person whom I adore both personally and professionally. But before yesterday, I have never wanted to hug her for an hour and thank her forever.
Silence is a solid, interestingly-told YA novel that seems, superficially, to be just another wave in the current flood of YA supernatural. Being a wave isn't bad; I write urban fantasy, I am basically sponsoring a surfing competition. But there's something wonderful about diving into a wave and discovering infinitely more.
Emma, our protagonist, talks to dead people. She has several close female friends, including Allison, who would be a stereotypical geek in some stories, and Amy, who would be just as stereotypically a mean girl. Yet they work, and they make sense, because they are genuinely written as people. It's not presented as criminal to be smart, or to be pretty: it's just who you are. Emma's greatest asset is her niceness, a genuine generosity of spirit that is so very rare in heroines today. She reminded me of Vixy, and that's about the highest praise I have.
But really, where this book won me, and why I recommend it so readily, was when we met Michael. Michael, who is a high-functioning autistic who has been going to school with Emma and the others since kindergarten. Michael, who is in advanced math and science classes and doing just fine, thank you. Michael, whose friends care about him and look out for him, and who value his friendship and his place in their lives. He is presented with limitations, but so is every other character in the book. He's presented as a person, and for that alone, I will love Michelle forever.
Read Silence. Read it because it's awesome, and read it because any author who includes a complex, well-written, believable, believably autistic central character deserves our applause, and book sales are the best form of clapped hands, for an author.
My hat is off to her.
Yesterday, I read Silence, by Michelle Sagara. She's a fellow DAW author, a sweet, smart lady, and an all-around neat person whom I adore both personally and professionally. But before yesterday, I have never wanted to hug her for an hour and thank her forever.
Silence is a solid, interestingly-told YA novel that seems, superficially, to be just another wave in the current flood of YA supernatural. Being a wave isn't bad; I write urban fantasy, I am basically sponsoring a surfing competition. But there's something wonderful about diving into a wave and discovering infinitely more.
Emma, our protagonist, talks to dead people. She has several close female friends, including Allison, who would be a stereotypical geek in some stories, and Amy, who would be just as stereotypically a mean girl. Yet they work, and they make sense, because they are genuinely written as people. It's not presented as criminal to be smart, or to be pretty: it's just who you are. Emma's greatest asset is her niceness, a genuine generosity of spirit that is so very rare in heroines today. She reminded me of Vixy, and that's about the highest praise I have.
But really, where this book won me, and why I recommend it so readily, was when we met Michael. Michael, who is a high-functioning autistic who has been going to school with Emma and the others since kindergarten. Michael, who is in advanced math and science classes and doing just fine, thank you. Michael, whose friends care about him and look out for him, and who value his friendship and his place in their lives. He is presented with limitations, but so is every other character in the book. He's presented as a person, and for that alone, I will love Michelle forever.
Read Silence. Read it because it's awesome, and read it because any author who includes a complex, well-written, believable, believably autistic central character deserves our applause, and book sales are the best form of clapped hands, for an author.
My hat is off to her.
no subject
Actually, you may not know that you have experience with anyone on the spectrum. There is a wide swath of the autism spectrum that can present as neurotypical—you wouldn't know it unless they told you. It's a sensory processing issue and can manifest itself in odd ways.
And I say this because after we got a diagnosis of our son as mildly autistic (as in, stick him in a special ed preschool so he learns coping techniques rather than having to develop them himself and he'll probably be mainstreamed by the time he hits third grade), my husband started noticing interesting developmental parallels with his childhood.
We're considering getting a diagnosis just to clear things up, but we're pretty sure based on the evidence that he was exactly the same autism profile as our son, and nobody noticed because he just seemed to be a bright, somewhat geeky kid*.
*His mother insists that no, he couldn't possibly be on the spectrum. Which is amusing, since she's the one who pushed us to get our kid tested & into therapy. She was a special ed teacher and may have instinctively compensated.
no subject
And as I thought about it, I do know someone, although not well - a coworker's son is somewhere on the spectrum, although I don't know where. I remember she had a hard time one day when the schools had a snow day, but we didn't, and he couldn't understand why there wasn't school and it wasn't a holiday.