Amanda LeducResenhas

A critique of our understanding of fairytales snd where they fit into our understanding of the world. The author had Cerebral Palsy as a child and had surgery to help her fit into our world; Disfigured is her take on how fairytales helped and hindered how she figured out how to fit in.
This is an oversimplified review because this book had a much deeper affect on me than I thought it would.

Good read, but I found it repetitive.

A very eye opening book about the role of disabilities and disabled people in fairy tales, pop culture and even our language.

I would recommend to anyone looking to further their understanding in this area.

This was an interesting novel, I am still not sure what was happening to the world after the catastrophe, or why Tasha and Heather were having the visions.

Overall, it was an interesting story and I would read more books written by Amanda Leduc in the future.

It is with a heavy heart that I note my star rating. Someone described this book, and the actual book wound up being so different. The structure is terrible. I had thought this book would examine and draw paraellels to Grimm tales and Disney versions, and disabilities characters had; while the author mentioned her own experiences with disability. I thought it would be a collection of essays. It was not that. She repeats herself OFTEN. She examines, then keeps mentioning, the same handful of Grimm tales and the same three Disney movies so often that I honestly started wondering if she realized others existed. Another reviewer on here wondered why Hook from "Peter Pan," for example, was never mentioned. GOOD QUESTION. -That- would have been so interesting to explore as thoroughly as Leduc did "The Little Mermaid." Many disability activists and educators were interviewed for the book, and I was delighted to see their names and read what they had to say. Leduc spends about half the book repeating and adding details of her own experiences with disability and bullying. It's not solidly weaved into the book; it's dumped in at odd places with no reason nor transition. The book gets wordy at the end, and the conclusion and the afterword blend together.

There were sentences I read out loud to myself, stunned at how I wasn't alone and how another person's similar experiences validated me so much. I've been disabled and medically complex since I was a baby. I wanted to see myself in this book, but I hardly did. When I did, I was indeed thrilled. I'm really glad I read this, and parts of it were educational, validating, and wonderful, but it ultimately wasn't what I was looking for.

Part memoir, part fairy tale analysis, this book is a great look at how disability is portrayed in fairy tales, and how that shapes our view of disability and helps shape unconscious bias and ablism. Really worth a listen.½

If you're looking for a post-apocalyptic, nature-takes-revenge on humans, with a fantasy overlay novel which represents disability rights, then The Centaur's Wife is your ticket.

Amanda Leduc presents a dark, relentless story in which a group of survivors takes refuge in the remains of a city which sits at the foot of a mystical mountain. And the mountain is in turn the refuge of centaurs.

The story is complex, well-written, certainly interesting. But there were times I felt Leduc was trying too hard, trying to fit too many concepts into one novel. I'm in the minority here, I realize, which is not uncommon in itself. There was the apocalypse itself, which was never really clearly defined, just that there had been some sort of meteor event, or some such. There was the violent rebellion of the plant world which set about devouring and assimilating any remaining humans. There was the racism regarding centaurs. There was the protagonist's disability in the form of a leg which has become malformed. And there was the ancient backstory of a shattered love, and cross-species children become centaurs.

I'm afraid, however, my willingness to suspend disbelief and accept the convoluted world Leduc created ended when the human female protagonist has sex with the centaur male protagonist. Yup. I'm reading this thinking: how does that work? I know: things we shouldn't think about. But I couldn't help it. And right there, in that scene near the denouement, simply ended it for me. Not because of some sense of delicacy, but rather from plausibility. Seriously: how does that work?

Now, I know there are myriad legends about human congress with animals, right from the famous story of the minotaur to Leduc's centaur riding woman. (Forgive the play on words.) But even so....

And in the end, there is much ambiguity, despair, and further darkness, an implacable sort of futility which is well-written, very emotive.

You should probably read The Centaur's Wife and make up your own mind.

I tried to like this book but in the end I just didn't think it was that good or illuminating. I liked Sam's story and Timmy's but I found Delilah's coarse and disturbing. And the esoteric arguments for God a bit opaque.½

When I say this book is unlike anything I've ever read, I really mean it. A crazy mix of scifi apocalypse and green fantasy, this story combines the two pretty seamlessly. And that's something I can't say I've read before. A meteor shower that takes out the human world as we know it, centaurs that live on a magical safeguarded mountain, and the most effortless mass murdering of characters I've ever read, this book was strangely very stressful and also very calming at the same time to read. Can you say you've read anything like that before?

Check out my full review here!

https://radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com/2021/02/16/book-birthday-review-the...

Leduc's book examines how negative views of disability are pervasive in the fairy tales at the foundation of western culture. She makes a strong case for new fairy tales and new adaptations of old ones to help us recognize the magic inherent in all bodies - able and disabled.

I was lucky enough to get this as an ER book. I'm disabled myself (as is the author), so it appealed from that point of view (I was never particularly interested in fairy tales).

This is a taster book, in my opinion. It's more academic than a memoir (Leduc tells her own story and relationship to fairy tales as it goes along) but isn't an in-depth academic study. The balance worked for me. Though the shifts in focus could have potentially been more skillfully handled (Leduc is still pretty young and this is her first work of non-fiction), that didn't take away from my reading experience.

An interesting, thought-provoking read for this disabled reader.

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space is a study on the relationship between old and new fairy tales (in various formats) and attitudes towards disabilities. Author Amanda LeDuc also intersperses her personal experiences of dealing with mild cerebral palsy -- both physically and how society treats her. The memoir aspect had more material included than I expected, but still worthwhile reading. LeDuc also occasionally cites viewpoints by other disabled activists. Through LeDuc's astute lens, there is some hope that society will be more aware and accepting of those of us who don't fit in a "normal" category.

Fairy tales and fairy tale archetypes as examined by LeDuc include the traditional ones such as those by the Brothers Grimm, Disney adaptions, some comics, and even some modern ones by Angela Carter.

One good example of how a disability (and the viewpoints associated with it) and a fairy tale are incorporated -- one often referred to by LeDuc -- is that of the Little Mermaid. The Disney version has Ariel, the mermaid reach a happy ending on the terms of "normal" society (we are reminded here that, in the original story by Hans Christian Anderson, the mermaid unhappily dies instead). Not only does Ariel lose the familiarity of her fins, she also loses her voice at one point. LeDuc wonders, as I have had, why wouldn't this little mermaid and her prince learned sign language and/or communicate by writing. Rather, Ariel/the mermaid has to change herself to conform.

Other examples cited here show that happy endings come to those, usually rendered by some sort of spell, only if they are transformed into visions of beauty and perfection (see: the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, the Ugly Ducking).

This book is much more than pointing out the shortfalls of fairy tales -- a lot is discussed about how the disabled find it necessary to accommodate ourselves to this world, even with ramps for wheelchairs, captioning for TV and the like (although these are not always with full availability).

Much of this book was enlightening and thought-provoking. Although I am Deaf myself, I hadn't realized how insidious the attitudes towards disabled/less than perfect were within fairy tales and other stories being told -- I know they're there, but this much?!

I wish I could quote directly from my copy -- but it was an ARC provided through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers. There are many good
points made within of LeDuc's important message of how we can better accept, understand, and accommodate the differences between many of us.

The promise of a fresh and timely way of looking at fairy tales drew me to DISFIGURED—in a genre so frequently trawled for novel insights, Amanda Leduc's focus on the disabled body as an overlooked and objectified element promised an eye-opening read. She does deliver significantly on this promise. DISFIGURED is informed and interesting, putting disability activism and fairytale studies together on the page in clear, accessible terms. As an introduction to either topic, you could do a lot worse. Leduc is intriguing when she analyzes tales (like "Hans My Hedgehog" and "The Maiden With No Hands") that "redeem" their disabled protagonist with a "normal" body as some kind of reward for goodness, and she is persuasive when she connects this tendency to concepts like inspiration porn and the charity model of disability. She tackles pop culture as well, offering penetrating insights into Disney, especially "The Little Mermaid" and "Maleficent," and, more superficially, into current superhero franchises.

Leduc also devotes a considerable portion of DISFIGURED to memoir, which is integrated throughout. She speaks candidly of the medical, physical, and especially emotional impacts of growing up with cerebral palsy. Her pain is palpable as she details the constant bullying she endured as a child and how that trauma fed into depression as an adult. The book falters here somewhat, especially in the final chapters, as Leduc seems unable to quite tie all the strands of DISFIGURED's several topics together. Each part has merits—though my favorite was the fairytale analysis juxtaposed with disability studies—but the open-ended nature of her personal pain, while evoking emotions from sympathy to anger on her behalf to identification, seems to make it difficult for the book to completely land in a way that feels resolved.

DISFIGURED is ambitious. It plunges without apparent fear into the nitty gritty of the personal and carefully links it to vital strands of disability activism and theory. It places this in the vast context of centuries of storytelling, including modern examples, and attempts to marry it all together in the space of a couple hundred pages. It doesn't entirely manage to do so, but it is an affecting and enlightening read, and any thoughtful reader will find something worthwhile in these pages.½

Disclaimer: I won an ARC of this on Library thing.
Disfigured is one of those books that isn’t quite what you thought it was going to be, but that’s fine because it is a damn good book. When I entered the early review giveaway, I thought or imagine it to be more of a critique of how disability was presented in the fairy tales, the book, however, is not entirely that so less literary criticism and more a personal reflection about how fairy tales influenced how society sees disability (both physical and mental). She also addresses fairy tale in wider range – the use of Marvel movies for instance.
The important thing is that Leduc’s book makes how you view the tales in their various inactions differently but also the stories affect those who read them as well as how society views disability.
The weakest part oft eh book is the section that deals with Marvel superheroes, in particular those from the MCU. This isn’t because a discussion of superheroes isn’t relevant in the discussion of fairy tales, but how the discussion takes place. For the most part, the discussion seems limited to Marvel heroes as they are portrayed in the movies, which means in the discussion about Captain (Ms.) Marvel the alcoholism and the depowerment are not mentioned. And this feels off, at least the depowerment. War Machine, too, is not mentioned. (DC isn’t either). This is also slightly true of her discussion of Riqut with the Tuft, where the daughter who is ugly but smart gets dropped by everyone when the pretty daughter gets brains. That daughter should have been mentioned.
Those two caveats aside, the book is good. The discussion about Disney – both live action and animated is important, especially in the discussion of Maleficent and the loss of her wings. While the boom might not be a totally break though in how to look at tales, it does directly address the important factor of representation. While some readers might find the book to be too memoir oriented, this is important because it shows how a key part of childhood is seen by some children and the influence it might have later in life.

Damn, this book will make you think long and deep about the fairy tales we internalized as kids. Once you think about it, the connection between disability and fairy tale is so obviously there, but since so many of us started watching/reading/hearing these tales in our youth we accepted major themes as truth. Only certain beautiful princesses or maidens were worthy of a happy ending. Disfigurement meant you were deceitful and/or a villain. If you were ugly or beastly (beauty and the beast/ the ugly duckling) you had to go through a trial to prove you were worthy of being beautiful. Unless you were the hunchback of Notre Dame; a good guy; but his looks made him unfit for love. Chapters tied in with the authors personal story of learning to live with other's perceptions of her and understand her own disability through her lens and not the worlds. Extremely eye opening and sure to be a great conversation starter. From Disney to superheros to Game of Thrones to Grimm; all angles are covered. As an able-bodied person; this really made me think long and hard about how I need to continually be making space for others with different needs then my own. A fascinating book!

Amanda Leduc has captured thoughts and emotions from our society in her novel The Miracles of Ordinary Men that perhaps haven’t been fully expressed by us all yet. Her characters fumble and struggle with life unsure on how to move forward with it. This is one of those reads that needs to be savoured and pondered over. Not one that is read quickly and forgotten about.

http://tinyurl.com/kzrezjz

I am loath to resort to using standard book-reviewing clichés. But they creep in.

How many times can I say something is beautiful without calling it "beautiful" but without resorting to "magical", "profound", "deeply important", "urban fairy tale of loneliness and family and sex and self"?

The Miracles of Ordinary Men left me breathless. I couldn't put it down, and several other book review clichés. It made me grateful for being able to read, and grateful for Leduc existing and having worked so hard to create this. A beautiful, brutal, complicated and disturbing tale, it reminded me of Angela Carter's work, as well as Jason Hrivnak's The Plight House. Wim Wenders' film featuring angels, Wings of Desire. Not the one with Nicholas Cage, the first one, auf Deutsch. I have long been fascinated with angels and devils and reality and reality's mutability, and this novel was a fantastic exploration of so much of that.

This book is tough to rate in terms of stars so I will decline--it's beautifully written and full of heart and warmth. The questions provoked in the reader are worth asking. But I found the relationship between two of the main characters too dark and too brutal to enjoy. I found myself wincing at Lila's language (although it's true to her character and the other characters are always nagging her about it) because I listened to it on audible. Reading it inside my head might have been easier to filter. And for those two reasons, I would hesitate to recommend it. Mind you, most of my reading friends are tougher than I am!

But aside from my own personal squeamishness, I must enthusiastically congratulate Amanda (I believe this is her first published novel) on her daring use of magical realism. Bravo! The style is tough to pull off and she does it so convincingly where others often fail. Also, I found so much evidence of kindred spirits in Amanda's choice of references (S. Kierkegaard, Joni Mitchell etc.) I loved loved loved the way questions about God and our place as human beings in the universe were brought up, explored, and left for the reader to ponder. There was transcendence and most important of all in stories: HOPE. I respect that kind of writing. The characters were complex and the plot was unpredictable. The descriptions of Vancouver, Victoria and the road to Tofino made me positively homesick for the West Coast (as I'm from there.) And finally, how could I resist a story in which a cat plays a major role--this is a time honoured tradition among the best writers (Think Timothy Findley, T.S. Eliot, Lewis Carroll.)

I will certainly be keeping an eye out for future novels, Amanda. Thank you very much for this one.