Implementación de Tecnologías de la Información

Everything, Everything (Yoon, 2015) is a romance between a seemingly disabled protagonist, Madeline, and the nondisabled boy next door, Olly. At the beginning of the book, we are led to believe that Maddy has Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or SCID, which, in short, means that she is allergic to everything. She cannot go outside. She lives in her house in a protective bubble with only new things that have been sterilized multiple times before she is allowed to use them. Her house has special filters and airlocks and round-the-clock medical care. Unfortunately, this is not a story about a

disabled 18-year-old falling in love with a nondisabled one and the ways they navigate that relationship. The plot twist is that Madeline is not, in fact, sick; her mother has what is likely Munchausen by proxy syndrome, where a parent either fakes a sick child or makes the child sick. After Maddy’s father and brother were killed in a car accident, her mother took drastic steps to ensure that Maddy would never get hurt or leave her: She gave her child a rare illness that meant she could not go outside without risking death. This is a story of child abuse with a mentally ill parent. As a result, this book embraces the deeply problematic narrative that disabled people cannot have happy endings. For Maddy to get her happy ending, she has to be nondisabled. The other two disabled characters in the story—Maddy’s mother and Olly’s father, who is an abusive alcoholic— do not get happy endings: Maddy’s mother loses the person she cares about most, and Olly’s mother leaves her husband.

Everything, Everything is problematic long before the big reveal, however. Maddy believes that she is a burden to those who care about her, especially her mother:

For the thousandth time I realize anew how hard my disease is on her. It’s the only world I’ve known, but before me she had my brother and my dad. She traveled and played soccer. She had a normal life that did not include being cloistered in a bubble for fourteen hours a day with her sick teenage daughter (loc. 468).

This framing ties into the trope of the disabled person as less than, and it is closely related to the trope of the disabled person being unable to fully participate in life that is the heart of this story. After Maddy’s mother makes her break off contact with Olly, Maddy sees Olly with another girl:

My mom’s words come back to me. I don’t want you to have a broken heart. She knew what would happen. There was always going to be someone else. Someone who isn’t sick. Someone who can leave her house. Someone he can talk to and touch and kiss and everything else (loc. 1934).

Being in relationships with disabled people is too difficult—at least according to Yoon’s Everything, Everything. Of course, Olly would choose to be with someone nondisabled. And, of course, Maddy would want to change that. Throughout the story, she longs for a cure. This intensifies after she meets Olly. Maddy also deals with a lot of unaddressed internalized ableism, believing that her life is worthwhile only inasmuch as it looks as nondisabled as possible:

Ever since Olly came into my life there’ve been two Maddys: the one who lives through books and doesn’t want to die, and the one who lives and suspects that death will be a small price to pay for it. … The second Maddy knows that this pale half life is not really living. (loc. 2024-2034)

Maddy believes her life only has value if she can do the things nondisabled people do. Unsurprisingly, this story features a strong narrative of inspiration porn. Early on in the book, Maddy’s at-home nurse Carla tells her, “You’re the strongest, bravest person I know. You better believe that” (loc. 501). Carla, a medical professional, also lauds Maddy for not getting depressed—as if depression, a mental illness that cannot be staved off by willpower or a cheerful spirit, would mean she somehow failed as a disabled person:

When I first started with you I thought it was only a matter of time before depression would take you over. And there was that one summer when it came close, but it didn’t happen. Every day you get up and learn something new. Every day you find something to be happy about. Every single day you have a smile for me” (loc. 501.

In addition to inspiration porn, this is a prime example of the trope of the eternally cheerful disabled person who never lets her disability get her down. Similarly to Cyra in Carve the Mark, Maddy is expected to be a fighter but never show the strain. This is harmful to real-life disabled people who have depression or who, as actual human, have down days. Disabled people are allowed to be brave, sure. But we are also angry and

scared and passionate and a thousand other things. Reducing us to inspiration robs us of our depth and our humanity.

The two actually disabled characters in Everything, Everything are not portrayed authentically or sympathetically. Maddy’s mother, a doctor, constantly worries about Maddy’s health to the point of being controlling. She panics when Maddy leaves the house for a minute and guilt trips Maddy to get her to not do it again. When she finds out Carla has been letting Olly come into the house, she fires her. After Maddy runs away and is brought back quite sick, something the mother had kept hidden for nearly 20 years starts breaking free until eventually the truth comes out. The words used to describe Maddy’s doctor mother are telling: uncertain, not quite right, confused, broken, madness, damaged. She is disability as the metaphor for badness—for what else could you call a mother who made her own child sick? Olly’s father, an abusive alcoholic, is cartoon villain bad; he never has a positive interaction with any other character on the page.

Everything, Everything includes a variety of ableist language: blind, crazy, insane, dumb, idiot, crackpot, crippled, and madness.