This has been on my TBR shelf, and I have been meaning to read it, for yearssssssss. I knew that I would be so interested in it. And I was absolutely right. Glad I finally got myself around to picking it up.

In this short-ish piece of nonfiction, Leduc explores the way the the messages about beauty and goodness and ugliness and evil have are both informed by and have a profound effect on the way the world sees disability, and how that is turn affects those (like herself, Leduc has CP) who are disabled. She makes it very clear in the intro that this is not necessarily a scholarly work, though she has of course done research for it (I found the light history of fairy tales, folklore, and legend storytelling to be fascinating), but rather a bit of social commentary, a bringing together of many disability justice theories and perspectives and voices, and a narrative both personal and through interviews/anecdotes from other disabled people. I appreciate the clarity of her writing, both in the words themselves and in what they are meant to be/do in a larger sense, as well as in separating out the history/research/data from the personal aspects (while both are deeply important, knowing where the lines are means a lot). All in all, this was an incredibly compelling work, one that was both eye-opening and mind-expanding, and I was right: I really enjoyed and appreciated it. 

As with a lot of nonfiction, I took myriad notes while reading this. And I want to keep all my thoughts for posterity, as well as make it palatable for the reader, so this will be a bullet-point-style review situation.

- BIG POINT: **It is always individual and never society that transforms.** It is never society that changes, at the end of the fairy tale, rather it is always the protagonist who changes/transforms to become more palatable under the standards of society that are already in place…and how that reinforces/maintains expectations and class/societal structures already in place as a ‘moral’ and integral to the HEA and protagonist has to prove their worthiness of acceptance within that.

- The conversation about “strangeness” in fairy tales being due to a search for magical explanations for disabilities/differences/illnesses (ones that we now have more medical answers for) was fascinating. You can totally understand how/why it would seem like magic when a person was affected/suffering/cured from an unexplainable affliction.

- The high morality of charity as a end point of these tales (versus the understood lower morality of those who are ill/disabled), is an easy out for us to not have to work to actually better the greater structures/structural inequalities. And in fact, Leduc shows how that POV actually perpetuates them, as the “generous philanthropist” takes home all the accolades without working to actually change anything in a substantive way, while maybe the one single disabled/"in need" person is helped, but everyone else is not affected at all.

- Ohhhhhh the line Leduc drawn from magical quests/cures that *seem* ridiculous now, even while we peddle things like hypnosis and green tea and detoxes and faith healers as “fixes.” So insightful and really thought-provoking.

-  There was some extrapolation to other societal restraints areas, like mental illlness and gender, that I thought brought Leduc's messages into a wider lens in a really useful way.

-  I super appreciated the exploration of stories that we tend to think are a better message, like Shrek, where the HEA isn't necessarily conformity-based. And yet, Fiona only sees her ogre-self as beautiful after Shrek says so, and even then, they are different together, matching, in a way that again absolves the world of having to make any actual structural change to its understanding of beauty/ability. 

- BIG POINT: Fairy tales do not form in a vacuum, rather in response to culture and society in which they form.

- These stories (fairy tales) teach the power of assimilation…but not with the goal being power itself, but rather simple survival. Which is, when you actually think about it, quite upsetting. 

-  Disability as emblematic of imperfect...what messages kids - both able-bodied and disabled - internalize as a result (and the power reaching minds that young and formative). 

I was really affected by Leduc's comments on the importance and power of words (using them for good or evil) and the effort we put in to telling new stories, and actively working not to continue equating disability with negative (like lame and tone deaf) so that we can reshape and remake the world into somewhere that a protagonist can triumph with the help of community and obstacles removed, instead of having to overcome the obstacles continuously and without end forever. This lines up with much of the stigma-reducing language work we teach in the mental illness area (of course, the concepts are the same, obviously) and I will absolutely work to expand my own efforts on the front (and gently correctly those around me, as well). I feel slightly buoyed by having an actionable step to take, post reading this. 

There was definitely some repetition in these pages, and it really only scratches the surface of the topic. But, the world of fairy tales and disability is so large, it makes sense for Leduc to stay in her experience/lane...because it had to be cut down somehow. But in a general sense, this  interspersing of retellings, reflections, historical scholarship and sociology, personal memories/reflections, doctors’ medical notes, references to other scholars of this topic, intersectional social justice (esp racial) of the disabled experience, was an amazing read. A really thought provoking and wonderful reframing of things we (able-bodied people) take for granted. Also, a lovely sort of reflection and discussion and wondering at how things could be better, but don’t come here - which she says in the forward - for a handbook on how to be a disability activist. 

“How to recognize that it isn’t life’s divergence from this arc that is the problem, but the establishment of this arc in the first place - these able-bodied ideals, these able-bodied expectations? And how to wrestle with this difference between the able-bodied arc and the disabled one when disability is so entirely absent from these happy endings?”

“Fairy stories are not real, no. But neither are they ever only stories.”

“There is something insidious about the way we conceptualize beauty, about the way we associate gendered values of goodness and purity with what is dainty and pleasing and small. It isn't hard to move from this through to the way we frown upon anything that is larger or unusual or doesn't fit the status quo. It isn't difficult, in other words, to move from the way fairy tales have helped us to conceptualize beauty and goodness through to the way that our ideas of beauty and goodness actually operate in the world. Perhaps it isn't magic, but for those of us who'll never fit in those shoes no matter how we try, it might as well be.”

“Once again, we place the onus of recovery - successful completion of the quest - on the individual, and place much less emphasis on the role and responsibility of the community to offer the help that it can. Once again, we support and perpetuate a culture where the emphasis is on the cure rather than societal change - where the aim of the narrative is to eradicate the disabled life rather than change the world so that the disabled life can thrive.”

“It seemed easier to imagine a world where I had magical powers than a world where different bodies just existed side by side.”

“If society is not used to seeing disabled people in stories, society becomes used to not seeing disabled people in real life. If society is not used to seeing disabled people in real life, society will continue to build a world that makes it exceedingly difficult for disabled people to participate in said world, thus perpetuating the problem.”

“Fairy tales and fables are never only stories: they are the scaffolding by which we understand crucial things. Fairness, hierarchy, patterns of behaviour; who deserves a happy ending and who doesn't. What it means to deserve something in the first place; what happy endings mean in both the imagination and the world.”