Overcoming Narrative Analysis

When reading autobiographies written by people with disabilities, a source of tension can sometimes be found between the author and the mediatory forces which surround their writing process. When reading such texts about individuals with intellectual disabilities, however, this tension colors every inch of the text, from its organizational structure to the progression of its narrative. In the case of memoirs such as Rachel Simon’s Riding the Bus with my Sister and Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz’s Count Us In, the various forms of narrative mediation present essentially warp the texts into providing narratives exclusively targeted at a non-disabled audience. To elaborate, their stories prioritize portraying an overcoming narrative of sorts, a specific style of storytelling

This analysis will look at how mediation from family members in Riding the Bus with my Sister and Count Us In can gloss over trauma for the sake of the production of an overcoming narrative, as well as how spoken and written speech can act as a form of agency for the intellectually disabled in such texts. Despite both memoirs’ gravitation towards overcoming narratives, Count Us In’s dialogue heavy structure ultimately allows its key figures more agency over their narrative, whereas Riding the Bus with my Sister remains static and two-dimensional in its portrayal of Beth as a lead character. Before individually parsing out the mediation and chances for agency present in both texts, though, it is important to establish how these respective tales have the qualities of overcoming