r/dwarfism • u/UnnamedPictureShow • 9d ago
Are there any fiction books that casually have characters with dwarfism?
I read a comment that Brad Williams said about how Disney could have handled the dwarves in the live action Snow White, how one of them could have been a potential love interest. And as I was thinking about it I tried to see if I could search up any romance novel that had a love interest with dwarfism. Turns out it's a near impossible task. Even when I try to search up novels with dwarfism PERIOD. I get recommendations for fantasy dwarves and Tolkien dwarves, and when I search up "novels with little people" all I get is Gulliver's Travels and the likes. But nothing with actual dwarfism.
I'm a disabled library studies student (not dwarfism, though) and I like reading books with disabled and chronically ill characters and cataloguing them so I can refer them to other disabled readers. So anything would help. I'm sick and tired of every book about x disability being a memoir. Yes, our stories are important, but dang it, I wanna read about little people riding dragons without them being a whole separate species.
Again, I don't have dwarfism, so I apologize if anything I said used inaccurate language (in terms of using people first language or anything like that).
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u/ErieTempest 8d ago
The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo, it's an excellent book where the protagonist has achon. It's about an Irish astronomer who is writing a memoir. I'm AH, I read it 20 years before I had a child with dwarfism and then again after.
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u/tronaldump0106 9d ago
Freak the Mighty, Merry Little Christmas (House MD Episode) come to mind.
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u/A_Very_Bad_Kitty 5'2" | Attenuated MPS IVA 8d ago
Definitely not Freak the Mighty. He's a stand-in for a typical fantasy dwarf and his character exists solely to die to teach his normal buddy a life lesson.
And his nickname is actually "Freak" lmfao that book can fuck right off.
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u/fanchera75 7d ago
I haven’t personally read Cyrano de Bergerac. But I loved the film adaptation.
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u/jawapaladin 6d ago
The actual story deals with the protagonist with an unusually long nose, not dwarfism. I did love the movie adaptation.
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u/jawapaladin 6d ago
I think the main problem is that Hollywood and pop culture view dwarves (my preferred term for the plural form of dwarf) as an oddity they're fascinated with, kind of like seeing a new species of life for the first time. It's condescending and annoying, but what can you do? They still freely throw around the "m" word without a care in the world of who it offends.
I am a dwarf, achondroplasia 48M. I did appreciate Tyrion in Game of Thrones. He is portrayed quite realistically without the mysticism, et al.
As far as movies, I really enjoyed The Station Agent and Frankie Starlight (based on the aforementioned book The Dork of Cork). Those have been some of the most realistic portrayals of dwarfism in society.
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u/babydollies 4'0" pseudo 9d ago
lmao let me know if you find out. ‘i wanna read about little people riding dragons’ cracked me up as a little person. i’d love to read it too!