I appreciate Amanda Leduc’s earnestness and honesty in Disfigured; she shares candidly about her challenges and approaches the future of fairy tales with gentle optimism.

However, in my opinion it tends to read more like a meandering essay - a flow of thoughts - than a curated & edited book. I enjoyed the windows into her childhood and the thoughtful questions she posed to the readers the most. There are some great journal prompts in here, and some interesting observations.

Leduc is upfront about her limitations as a writer, but the scope of the book is incredibly narrow. It’s VERY lightly researched and includes a couple of quotes from friends in the disability space, but it really misses the mark in terms of offering any intersectionality at all. (This was especially apparent to me in segments regarding the appearances of villains.) We were teased by a couple of comments around sexism, but she didn’t go deeper there (and boy is there an intersection between ableism and sexism). Leduc also often brings a strict black and white framework to complicated issues.

I was confused by some of her arguments. Some were very broad, some made assumptions about the disability community as a whole (we’re not a monolith, c’mon now), and most if not all cherry-picked elements of a story while ignoring others (framing Ariel’s tail as her disability but not her mutism in The Little Mermaid, minimizing Game of Thrones characters - also, is GOT a fairytale? - also, she spoiled GOT big time lol, some inaccurate statements around the Marvel universe, etc.). There’s also a conflation of perceived ugliness with disability which I found confusing.

It didn’t seem carefully edited to me. There were several confusing transitions and lots of repetitiveness.

Ultimately, I found Disfigured to be an interesting read that lacked a lot of research. I appreciated its unapologetic challenge to Western fairy tales and the challenge to readers to start noticing these tropes and asking questions. 

CW: ableism, ableist slurs, mention of Nazis, suicidal thoughts, mental illness

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