THE BIG SALE IS ON! TELL ME MORE
Whitney Hardin is a scholar of game studies, comic studies, new media, and civic literacies. Julia E. Kiernan is assistant professor of communication at Lawrence Technological University.
Depictions of mental deficiency have been ubiquitous fuel for pop culture narratives. Of course, the limited and negative characterization of mental difference has never quite worked. Stereotypical stories are consumed by neurodiverse humans. These stories also operate within metaphorical frames and genres that are shaped through their reception and repetition. This excellent collection reveals how such stories gain new meaning -- because we refuse to believe or invest in a monolithic version of mental and cognitive difference – because we refuse to easily associate this difference with evil, sadness, violence, and loss. As the collected chapters show, when we remake, reboot, and adapt texts, despite their outdated representations of mental disability, they often come out both more accessible and broader in meaning, both more representative and more open to the audience. This collection captures the energy of this critical remaking, centering the agency of disabled people. -- Jay Dolmage, University of Waterloo
