Disability History Month - "We Grow Accustomed to the Dark" A Discussion of Acclaimed Canadian Children’s Writer Jean Little

About this episode

The episode discusses the life and works of Canadian children's author Jean Little, focusing on her experiences with disability and her contributions to literature.

In this third podcast in Disability History Month, Triple vision contributors Vic Pereira and Diana Brent discuss the autobiography "Stars Come Out Within" by the much loved Canadian children’s author Jean Little. Little wrote over 50 books, many of them dealing with the topic of disability, writing about the topic long before writers began to treat kids with disabilities as their own persons, with their own agency. Born with a visual impairment herself in 1932 in Japan, Little struggled all of her life to fit in – caught between the worlds of the sighted while not quite fitting into the community of individuals with vision loss. Despite her struggles, however, she left behind a treasure trove of published works which include novels, picture books, poetry and short stories. Little identified with the 19th century poet, Emily Dickinson who wrote the poem which starts with, "We grow accustomed to the Dark" and contains the title of her book "Stars Come Out Within". "We do develop strategies, and we do learn what it is like to live as someone with partial vision or totally blind - as where someone who shows up for an event and puts on a blindfold…

People in this episode

Hosts: Vic Pereira, Diana Brent

Topics covered

• disability
• children's literature
• autobiography
• Canadian authors
• visual impairment
• agency in disability

Keywords

• Jean Little
• disability history
• children's author
• visual impairment
• Canadian literature
• autobiography
• Emily Dickinson

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Stars Come Out Within, We grow accustomed to the Dark

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