A School Story, Not a Student Story: The Dyslexic Diagnosis Paradigm in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Abstract

Representations of dyslexia have a history of educational and literary scholarship primarily concerned with how dynamic characters with learning disabilities are and if they are positively portrayed. This article uses narrative theory to analyze how diagnosis operates on a structural level to create what I call the dyslexic diagnosis paradigm. Examining school stories featuring characters with dyslexia published between 2007 and 2020, I demonstrate how this paradigm functions through a structural closure of struggle, diagnosis and accommodations, and a psychological closure consisting of shame, declaration, and acceptance within these novels. Variations or polytypes of this narrative are also common within this corpus which maintain the psychological closure of shame, declaration, and acceptance present within the prototypical narrative. While some disability counternarratives or dyslexic persistence narratives nuance the school story, the dyslexic diagnosis paradigm ultimately remains prevalent and upholds the medical model of disability within the educational system, promoting the flawed status quo of disability rather than asking readers to question the validity of the systems which enforce them.