Hi everyone and welcome to the first interview for GeekDis 2022! I hope you’ve been enjoying the content myself and others have been creating so far. We’re only five days into GeekDis 2022 and there’s plenty more to come. I’m thrilled to introduce author Natania Barron, a speculative fiction author and mental health activist who openly talks about the need for more disabled representation in fantasy.

It is my pleasure to welcome Natania Barron to Just Geeking By to delve deeper into that subject for GeekDis!

Hi Natania! Thank you so much for agreeing to join me for an interview as a part of GeekDis, an open discussion on disability representation in pop culture. It is wonderful to have you here at Just Geeking By 🙂 Could you start us off by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Hi, there! Thanks for having me at Just Geeking By. Love the pun, by the way. 

I’m Natania Barron. I’m a fantasy author, mental health advocate, fashion historian, medievalist, queer person. Although I began with hopes for a career in academia, I eventually went into marketing, and that’s where I’ve stayed while I continue to write and research on the side. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 39, and it definitely put a lot of my life struggles in perspective, but it’s also given me a lot of focus, oddly enough. So much of what I fought against, I’ve realized, is just how I’m built. I don’t blame myself for not fitting in, for struggling where others don’t–there’s a lot of years of forgiveness and grace I’m working on.

Endless curiosity describes me best, and a deep well of creativity. I love telling stories and digging into history, and so that’s what I do whenever I can. My books are always about layers: character, history, culture, clothing, magic, and consequences. My brain is never quiet, and writing and art help me channel that into something else. All my life, writing is how I’ve made sense of the world, really. Even my emotions make more sense when I’m writing. So I want to tell stories about people who don’t always fit in, stories of people who uncover the truths no one wants to hear, stories about people who feel big feelings in worlds that aren’t made for them. It doesn’t matter if it’s Arthurian, Regency, Victorian, or modern. 

You talk openly living with ADHD on your blog, in one post you talk about how ADHD and your writing are intertwined. How does your experiences as a writer with ADHD compare to fictional characters with ADHD that you have comes across in pop culture? 

I think the fact that it took me so long to get diagnosed is a pretty good indication of how we need better ADHD representation in pop culture. The standard, hyperactive, “squirrel” ADHD person tends to be what we see–or a version of the manic pixie dream girl. It’s so often through the male gaze, or the “not like the other girls” approach. 

I’m old enough to be part of the lost generation of those who were raised as girls to be totally overlooked. I was super creative, but also very introverted as a kid. I didn’t struggle academically, but I read voraciously–often to the exclusion of being with other people. I was a knowledge sponge, but I struggled to make social relationships. Basically, I didn’t rock the boat. I was quirky and smart, but not a disruptor. It was after decades of anxiety, depression, and panic, that I started to realize it was more than just those things.

Additionally, you have championed the inclusion of authentic disability representation in fantasy literature. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

Neurodivergent brains have always been here. And I think many of us find our way into stories (you can’t tell me Pippin Took isn’t ADHD, or that Dumbledore isn’t on the spectrum). But, just like in queer rep, it can’t be about just the implied representation. Granted, in fantasy, you’re not going to have ADHD as a label, but people around them can be aware that they function differently–and, in addition, they can advocate for themselves. 

Trauma happens in fantasy all the time, for instance, both physically and mentally, and we know it can intensify the experience of ADHD. So can changes in menopause, giving birth to children, etc. There are so many opportunities for writers to think beyond the neurotypical, but also think about mental illness and disorders more broadly. It’s not just relegated to people with disorders–mental illness can strike anyone, any time. And I find worlds where people are both physically and mentally “typical” to be unbelievable. 

Yeah, it takes work. And it’s super important to make sure we’re amplifying disabled voices, but writing from a singular experience just limits the range of what human beings can experience. And it also limits what readers can do to see themselves in fiction, which is so important–not just for kids, but for adults, too. 

What are some positive disability representations that you have experienced?

Joe Abercrombie deals with trauma all the time in his books–war is a big deal, and PTSD is real. In his most recent series, the character of Savine endures a terrible hardship, and she deals with panic attacks, anxiety, erratic behavior, and a loss of self. Even as she tries to build herself back up again, she’s irrevocably changed. He doesn’t try to “magic” away her disability. 

I love that Leigh Bardugo also does this in her books, as well. It’s especially clear in the Six of Crows series. Each of the Crows has their own baggage, and I wouldn’t want to diagnose each and every one, but I think the signs are all there–hyperfocus, depression, social struggles, communication struggles. And with their friendships, they’re able to work around and with those disabilities.

Your description of yourself growing up made me realise just how many disabled characters often are portrayed as disruptors. It reminds me of one of your Twitter discussions where you discuss the major issue of disabled characters being introduced into a story to fill a particular role, usually a plot device or inspiration for nondisabled characters. Can you elaborate on this for us?

That started as just a general frustration that fantasy, as a genre, seems to gloss over disability–both physical and mental–because of magic. Yes, healing magic is great. But so often, we end up with magic that is a kind of panacea. Or, alternatively, that “strong” characters have to meet “weak” characters to learn their own flaws, see the value of their strength/value. Heroes, rarely, are disabled in any way. Sidekicks, sometimes. Villains, often. You don’t need to look very far. I remember wondering as a kid why Scar in The Lion King was… well, scarred. He’d clearly had some trauma, and lived it on his skin and face. But we never learn his story. He just serves to show how amazing Mufasa and, eventually, Simba is. 

And then there’s the healing problem. If you magic away all illness, you open up all kinds of problems. It’s very much connected to the issue of magic without consequence. Magic that just exists without cost. When magic exists without cost, healing becomes antithesis–disability becomes a kind of “badness” or wrongness. It can get complicated, and I just feel like it needs to be examined more, especially in fantasy.

I like the point you made there about showing actual disabled representation rather than just implying it. What advice would you give to other writers who are hesitant about doing so?

Disabled folks are everywhere. And if you don’t know them, you probably just haven’t asked the right questions. There are also so many great resources, books, films, that talk about the disabled experience. For so many writers, disability is either running a marathon or bed-ridden, but it’s a vast spectrum. Many disabled folks have good days and bad days; it’s an ebb and flow. Some folks have diseases that deteriorate. Others experience long periods of visible disability followed by periods of seeming invisibility. 

It’s really about doing the work, and really, writers ought to be doing that all around. In our culture we’ve gotten terribly lazy with disability, using it as symbolic rather than meaningful. It’s disease/disability first, not person first. The whole Tiny Tim problem. Do the work. Compared to fifty years ago, we have such a wealth of resources from disabled folks literally telling you–from TikTok to blogs, from YouTube to network TV– “this is my experience” and yet we still have terrible representation because the narrative dominance of the “magic/inspiring” disabled person is so strong.

In another Twitter thread, you highlight the common practice in the fantasy genre of using magic to heal everything and the problems this represents for disability representation. Do you think it’s possible for both to coexist?

I think it’s possible for both to exist, and it’s something I explored in the book I just finished, Queen of Fury. I remember, as a kid, wishing every birthday, every shiny penny in a pool, every falling star, that my dad would be healed. Some people do heal. Some illnesses go. 

But the person is forever changed. There is no going back to who you were before. In Queen of Fury, Gawain is suffering the effects of a decade and a half of fighting in wars: his body is giving up. He’s six and half feet plus of warrior, but his knees and shoulder, his back–he’s living in a world without physical therapy and a system of brawn over rest. Though I wanted him to experience some alleviation from his pain, I deliberately decided that his journey wasn’t about healing his body. It was about healing his perception of his abilities. He’s mourning his body’s brokenness, even though he thinks he’s okay with it; he’s not. Everyone in the world sees him as this unparalleled warrior, but now that he can’t fight, he’s struggling with their pity. He gets a chance to find himself outside of that, and yes, his disability plays into it, but it’s not the sole cause. 

That’s my choice as a writer. The other side is if you pit disability and disease against magic, you’re headed down a slippery path. Because then you start conflating it with evil, with the narrative that these things occur because of sin, etc., which again, comes from a long, predominantly Western Christian point of view (which is very much still alive and well in fantasy). Magic is not the “cure” to sickness. Sickness is not the antithesis to magic. 

Remember, there are real readers on the other side of that page, no matter if your work is fantasy, who live in a very real world. For ages books have conflated evil with queerness, darkness, otherness, fatness, disability–the list goes on and on. We’ve got to do better.

Thank you Natania for taking the time to talk to us!

Thank you for reading my interview with Natania Barron! Please do take the time to check out Natania’s website and her books below. Don’t forget to check out her books on GoodReads too! You can also follow Natania on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest!

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