Interview with Yoshiko Okuyama: Reframing Disability in Manga

In this episode Yoshiko Okuyama talks about her most recent monograph, Reframing Disability in Manga (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020). Okuyama explains that her work examines representations of disabled people in manga serialized throughout the 1990s and 2000s, focusing on portrayals of deaf, blind, paraplegic, and autistic individuals, as well as those with gender dysphoria. Bookman asks Okuyama about the history behind her project and the logic that guided her decision-making regarding specific manga titles and disability identities. The two also unpack the contributions of Reframing Disability for scholars of gender, disability, and manga.