Tangerine

When I was a kid I remember encountering fantasy books that took place in societies where people with blond hair and pale skin were considered to be unattractive. Early on, before the character development, the blond main character would be beating him- or herself up for being so "ugly" and "freakish." I enjoyed those books at the time, but in retrospect it strikes me as cheating because the reader gets to enjoy the angst of having the main character think that they're ugly, but doesn't actually have to identify with a character who has dark skin or dark hair, the traits that are considered undesirable in real life.

I just finished reading Tangerine by Edward Bloor, a young adult book that does the same thing with disability. The main character, Paul, is said to be "legally blind" but the implication is that this either hasn't been true since he was a kid, or that it doesn't really affect him that much. People react negatively to Paul's label of disability, and his glasses (which are apparently unusual-looking), but there are no instances in the whole book of Paul not being able to do something, or needing help, because of his vision. He describes things he sees which are quite far away (for example, birds flying and fields that he sees out the car window). His disability seems to exist in name only.

I've had this book since I was 14, because I bought it and never read it. I finally decided to take it to camp so it would stop crowding up my bookcase, and when I opened it to a random page I was surprised to see the word "IEP." It turns out that Paul's IEP is an important plot point--which is interesting, right? When I had an IEP I didn't know I had one, so I don't know whether IEPs are portrayed accurately in the book. They are portrayed as something that sucks.

The implication is that Paul has never had an IEP when he moves to Florida at the beginning of the book. (He's about thirteen or fourteen years old and has been visually impaired since he was five.) His mom mentions to his new principal that Paul is legally blind, and is told to fill out an IEP. Then Paul is given a guide at school, who he blows off saying "I can see fine," and is prevented from playing soccer because it would be bad for the insurance to have a legally blind kid on the team. Paul loves soccer and is really good at it, so he flips out and takes extreme action so that he can transfer to a different school and intentionally keep them from realizing he's disabled. The rest of the plot comes out of Paul's experiences playing soccer at at his new school where most of the students are poor and nonwhite (Paul is rich and white).

Throughout the book, the implication that Paul is impaired in any way is portrayed as laughable. In the narration, Paul keeps commenting that he hopes no authority figures from his old school see him and exclaim, "That kid's handicapped! He needs an IEP!" (Handicapped is the word the soccer coach used when explaining Paul couldn't be on the team; Paul never calls himself handicapped, disabled, blind, etc., but instead refers to "my glasses" as the thing that sets him apart.)

Paul's label of disability is used against him by his family as well as the school. It is obvious from the beginning of the book that Paul's brother has problems with violence and crime, but that their parents play favorites and ignore those problems. When Paul points out things that would reveal what's going on with his brother, his parents remind him that he can't see very well and probably misunderstood. I feel like this would be cool if Paul actually was impaired in any real way--I just read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I think Larssen does a fantastic job portraying Lisbeth as someone who is unfairly labeled and discriminated against due to her disability, without implying that her disability isn't real. But in Tangerine, disability is just an idea that you use to hurt someone, there's no real disability.

(I also feel like when you spend a lot of time saying "but I'm not really disabled! That's hilarious that you would say I'm disabled!" you start feeding the specter of those Really Disabled People who exist somewhere, who it would be so terrible/outlandish to be associated with.)

There are a few instances in the book that seem to imply a more positive identification with disability--or some kind of identification, anyway. Paul thinks of himself as a circus freak because his brother tells people that Paul became blind from looking at an eclipse straight on. (No prizes for guessing how Paul actually became blind.) Paul says that he doesn't mind being a racial minority at his new school because "my glasses" make him feel like a minority anyway--which is obviously problematic but does imply that disabled people are a minority group.

The most striking instance is when one of Paul's new friends is talking about his (the friend's) brother, Luis. Paul's friend talks about the knee injury Luis got as a kid, his ambitions, and the fact that he played soccer in middle and high school. When Paul asks what position Luis played, the friend replies, "He played goalie [Paul's favorite position], because he was handicapped."

Paul has a strong reaction and imagines that his friend might be making fun of him by using the word "handicapped," but realizes that he isn't and marvels that his friend neutrally used the word. Luis is a heroic character whom Paul admires and learns from, and I don't know exactly why Bloor decided to make him disabled and a goalie. The commonality between Luis and Paul is never discussed again.

I like reading books written for kids (although it was embarrassing when my 14-year-old camper said, "Oh yeah Tangerine, I just read that book for school") and I like the style of this book and think it has an interesting plot. But I'm sort of frustrated that Bloor brought in things like Paul's IEP and his parents undermining him because of his disability label, without making Paul actually be impaired. I feel like it could be a book that would humanize a disabled character and show how he is discriminated against, without being an "issue book" about ableism. But Bloor just makes it a book about a non-disabled kid who's inexplicably treated like he's disabled.