More Dyslexic Characters Please!

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, so in honor of that, I wanted to do another post on dyslexia. (I wanted to have this post up yesterday for World Dyslexia Day, but life happened.) Specifically on dyslexic representation in media.

For some context, I have moderate dyslexia. As someone who's chosen writing as her career, this can be tricky sometimes. But I've never let it stop me.

On my Instagram, I've been doing a bunch of reels about dyslexia to help raise awareness and give others a glimpse of what it's like. My latest reel for World Dyslexia Day was about some awesome dyslexic characters.

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A post shared by Rachel Meyer @ R's Loft (@rsloft)

But while looking up dyslexic characters to include, I realized there are almost none out there. A few TV characters, a few children's books, and Percy Jackson. That's pretty much it.

Since they estimate that 1 in 10 people have dyslexia of some degree, it's so weird to me that so few characters represent that.

Of course, disabilities of all kinds have been sadly lacking in the media for years. And a lot of times even when they are included, the characters with them are only defined by their disability.

Example: Wylan from Six of Crows. His two personality traits are can't read and gay love interest. That's not a personality, that's characteristics. (Can you tell I have a beef against Wylan?)

Anyway, it makes me sad that there are so few characters with dyslexia out there. It would be so great for kids to have characters to look to that struggle with the same thing as they do.

I think one of the reasons you don't see it often is because dyslexia is hard to describe. Especially on screen. How do you show what it's like to forget what a word is or which way is left or right?

But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. So I'm here to beg people to include more dyslexic characters in their books and movies. And not just child characters. Teenagers and adults too. Dyslexia isn't something that goes away. You just learn to hide it better.

I already have one dyslexic character, my superhero Zach, but this only makes me want to write more. To remind the world that struggling with reading and learning doesn't mean you're a failure.

Dyslexia doesn't define you.

What's something you'd like to see represented more in books and movies? Do you know anyone with dyslexia? Tell me in the comments.

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