Disability in Wonderland: Health and Normativity in Speculative Utopias

Adult-directed utopian fiction has historically rejected depictions of persons with disabilities, underrepresenting a community that comprises an estimated 15% of the world's population. From the earliest stories of utopias written for and about children, however, persons with disabilities have been included in abundance, and are central to classic narratives like The Wizard of Oz and Winnie the Pooh. In a perfect world centered on children and their caretakers, these works argue, characters with a diverse range of bodies and minds must flourish. Spanning from Lewis Carroll's 1865 Alice in Wonderland to Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us, this examination of the wonderland demonstrates the role that bodily and neurological diversity plays in an ever-popular subgenre.