Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

I've read a few different Young Adult anthologies recently, and they've all been utterly fantastic. This belongs right up there with A Thousand Beginnings and Endings and Toil & Trouble.

As someone who HAS a chronic illness that affects every aspect of my life, I identified with several of these stories quite a lot. There's one in particular in which they're putting on a play, and the narrator mentions how TIRED they are. That their doctor would tell them to back off, and not do so much, but they call that stagnation and they're not willing to give up the highs that come with accomplishing something that takes so much effort - and I feel that intimately. I'm still coming to terms with my new limits. There are times when I do too much, and I pay for it, in pain and fatigue and days unable to function as a human being - but it's usually worth it. I just have to plan for the aftermath. To see that in fiction was a really validating thing.

Other stories deal with other sorts of physical disabilities - a wheelchair user, people with canes, or blindness. Some of the characters have more mental disabilities - severe anxiety, depression, schizophrenia. This is a fantastic collection, spanning genres from contemporary fiction to magical realism to sci-fi to fantasy.

I'm going to be keeping an eye out for more Young Adult anthologies, as this is the third one that I've read recently and they're SO. GOOD. I know there's two more coming out in the near future; one centered on Jewish characters that Katherine Locke has another story in, and one centered on vampires that also has some familiar names in it. (Vampires Never Get Old, which is a super clever title for a Young Adult anthology of vampires!)

I love checking out short story anthologies to keep handy for days I don't have time to sit down with an entire novel, and man there have been some great ones recently. This is definitely one of them.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.