Mary: Welcome and helloooooo! This time on YA Book Club we’re talking about Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal. The novel follows Priya, a young med school student who has to take a break from school after contracting Lyme disease. While staying with her parents, Priya makes several friends online via Tumblr, and they form a support group for people with chronic illnesses. Her best friend out of the group, Brigid, is reluctant to talk about her chronic illness. As Priya and Brigid grow closer, they learn more about each other and explore what it means to be chronically ill in a world that doesn’t really accommodate for that. From here on out, there will be spoilers!
Emily: Yes, I’m very excited to talk about this one, spoilers and all. And we should also note we received copies of this book from the publisher. Many thanks to Quirk!
Mary: We can’t really talk about Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses without talking about the controversy surrounding it. Some readers (or people in the book community–many of them don’t seem to have read the book) took issue with the cover, which shows Brigid in werewolf form at the top of the cover, and Priya at the bottom. These reviews argue that the book cover is racist because it compares POC to animals. Some reviews also go further to argue that the entire novel is racist because it culturally appropriates Indian American culture by making Priya and her family Indian.
Obviously we aren’t the most qualified to write on this because we are, as we’ve said on the podcast many times, white women. From my point of view, I don’t think that O’Neal was doing anything disrespectful with Priya or her family, or trying to go too hard on their culture. She seemed to want to include lots of different types of people in her novel—the support group is very diverse too—and ended up making her main character a POC. That being said, I don’t think that Priya is any different than a white protagonist. While she is Indian American, her family is very Christian, eats typical “American” foods, etc. I’m not Indian American, so I’m not sure how it would feel to see that.
That being said, I think the arguments about the cover being racist are a little unfair. Priya and Brigid are two different characters with two different personalities. The werewolf is a white girl, and reading the novel at all would tell you that Priya is not a werewolf. What’s your take on this issue, Emily? Especially as a writer?
Emily: It’s a really complicated issue, and I’m not sure there’s an easy conclusion we can come to. As a white person, I at least don’t feel qualified to say with certainty that something is or isn’t racist or appropriation. Not to be like “oh it’s hard being white” because that is NOT AT ALL what I mean by this. It’s not hard being white, okay? But as a white writer, is it hard to know how to incorporate diversity into your stories without being offensive or appropriative. I saw some reviews of this book that said that Priya’s family was TOO stereotypically Desi. But then as you said, in most ways they seem just like a white family, which doesn’t seem right to me either.
Personally, for me, if I were incorporating a character in my stories that was in any way outside of my lived experience, I would want to have a sensitivity reader to go over it and let me know if I was doing or writing anything that might be tone deaf. As a white, cis-gender, straight, able-bodied woman, I am a member of many privileged groups of people, which means I can be dumb about a lot of things. And I think it’s important to claim our ignorance and reach out to see how we can be better—but also do our own research as well.
It seems like Kristen O’Neal did this. According to her FAQ on her website: “I also got sensitivity reads, especially for Priya's Indian-American identity—one after I finished the first draft of the novel, and another that went through my editor at Quirk first.” That of course doesn’t mean everything is all good, but it means the author at least did her best (I think) to be sensitive to experiences outside of her own.
Some people would argue that white people have no business writing from a non-white perspective, but this seems wrong too. But again, I am white, so I don’t know if I really have any right to weigh in on that.
I saw some reviews comparing this book to American Dirt, though. And that to me is a really unfair comparison. The problem with American Dirt is that the author was capitalizing off of the pain of people outside of her experience. It was extremely exploitative in that way. I don’t think at any point Lycanthropy is exploitative of the Indian American experience. This book explores pain, but it’s the pain of living in a chronically ill body. None of Priya’s struggles have to do with race. I agree that it would probably be unfair for O’Neal to speak on the struggles of being an Indian American. But she’s not doing that. So for me, that comparison isn’t right. These two situations are not at all the same.
But with all of that being said, as a white person, I’m not really allowed to say that this book isn’t racist. And if people don’t feel comfortable reading this book because they feel like it is racist, that’s totally valid.
Mary: For sure! I’m not an authority on it, those were just my initial thoughts. It’s a big question. I think my main issue is that a lot of reviews on Goodreads that say the book is racist said they hadn’t read it. While there are some books we can say are racist right off the bat, I don’t know that this is one. It’s more complicated, but also I’m not here to tell POC what is and isn’t racist.
I guess the heart of the novel is Brigid and Priya’s friendship, which I really enjoyed, but I’d also like to talk about the support group that the girls form early in the novel. They meet a group of people on Tumblr and decide to create a private Discord server to act as a support for each other as they all struggle with chronic illnesses. For me, this was what I was most interested in, since I studied disability studies in grad school.
It really felt like O’Neal was trying to say something about disability by including things like endometriosis in the lineup of disabilities, and I appreciated that. Disability is kind of a weird thing in that the medical perception of it is really important in how others see it. So something like cystic fibrosis? Yes, people recognize that. Endometriosis? A woman’s issue? People don’t care as much because medicine doesn’t care as much.
I’m not sure if O’Neal is disabled or not, but I enjoyed reading a book about disability that wasn’t completely focused on disability being THE WORST thing that could happen to a person.
Emily: So according to her website, O’Neal is chronically ill: “I have two autoimmune disorders and a number of other problems & issues with my body. I'm managing it better than I used to, but I still have flares somewhat regularly.”
The friendship and the support group as a whole were great and I think really speaks to how people are meeting other people in contemporary times. Now that we have access to the whole world on our computers, a lot of people meet some of their closest friends online, via Tumblr or other social media apps. I think it makes us all feel less alone, connecting to people who have similar experiences to ours throughout the world. I really appreciated that about this book.
Mary: For sure. It was hard for me not to think of people I know in real life who’ve had similar experiences. I’m thinking of someone I play D&D with who’s still in high school. He has so many friends all over the world that he chats with on Discord! It’s something that people started doing when I was in HS, but now young people are much more connected. It’s nice to think of the internet as something that brings people together instead of dividing us for once.
The format of Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses was one thing I really enjoyed, although I’ve read some reviews saying the opposite. Growing up, some of my favorite books were in that Royal Diaries series, so I love a good epistolary style novel. While this isn’t to that extreme per se, it does have lots of chat conversations in Discord and via text. It really worked for me and helped keep the novel moving along at a good pace.
Emily: I agree. I enjoyed the chat speak. If nothing else, it was a nice break and made the pacing of this really quick. My only issue with it was that sometimes I was like “ugh teens.” But I think that was the point. I can’t get mad at a book for not sounding authentically teen (They Both Die at the End) and then also get mad at a book for sounding like real teens, can I?
Mary: There were definitely a few “ugh teen” moments for me, too. Moreso there were a few moments where I thought, okay, O’Neal is being educational here and I have to remember younger readers might not know what endometriosis or Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is. I had to stop and remind myself I’m probably not the target audience here, even though I enjoyed the novel.
I don’t want to say too much, because it’s a BIG spoiler, but the way O’Neal frames lycanthropy is different from a lot of books I’ve read—in a good way. It’s more medical, more tied to science, and that feels like an important distinction for this book. Her transformations aren’t about the moon at all, and when they begin happening frequently, it’s more of a sign something is up with her health than anything else. But learning that is a journey, and I felt pretty invested in it.
Mary and Emily reading YA books.
Emily: Haha I don’t really have much to add to that except to say that I agree. I guess I also want to add that I love how Priya wants to be a doctor to help people like her who are living with chronic illnesses. But she also second-guesses herself because she’s like, “What business do I have helping others when I’m also sick?” And through helping Brigid she also sees how much she is capable of and how much she can help those who are sick. Maybe better than doctors who don’t have those experiences could.
I loved the scene with her dad when he comes into her room and shows her all this research he’s done on doctors with chronic illnesses. And advice he found online about how to get through medical school when you have a chronic illness. It was really touching and sweet.
Mary: Honestly, when I encounter a doctor or other medical professional who is like me, I’m happy. Finding a doctor who is also fat made the BIGGEST difference in my medical experiences because she wasn’t always out to fix my weight and not my symptoms. Doctors can totally be disabled, and I’m so happy Priya’s dad took the time to point that out to her. I think there’s something to be said for realizing a dream isn’t going to happen, sure, but there’s also something nice about realizing you can still achieve your dreams—it just might look different than what you anticipated.
There’s not really a lot of romance in this book, which I always feel is refreshing. Brigid and Priya are close friends that have an inseparable bond, and they love each other, but I don’t think they’re IN love. Spencer is kind of flirty with everyone, but nothing happens there either. Some of the people in the support group begin dating each other, but all of that happens off screen. As someone who didn’t have any big romances as a teen, I like to see it’s not just me, even if the examples are fictional. Lol. The lack of romantic tension was nice. It allowed for more focus on the, you know, werewolf issue.
Emily: I think Spencer’s flirtations are pretty much centered on Priya. But you’re right, it doesn’t really go anywhere other than friendship. And that’s perfect. The friendship is the point of the story. And I love that Brigid and Priya have a deep love for one another without being IN love. Because sometimes our deepest connections are friendships. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Mary: I gave this book a 4/5 on Goodreads. I really enjoyed it, but felt hesitant to give it a full blown 5 because of the race issues surrounding it. I don’t have all the answers to those questions, but I’ll say I really enjoyed it and appreciated a different sort of look at disability.
Emily: I also gave this 4 stars. Some of the snarky teen speak got a little grating to me, an old. But it felt authentic. And this books is doing a lot of fun new things with the werewolf genre. And friendship!
Next up, we’re reading The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He, which is a book I mentioned in my AAPI book roundup and one I’m really excited to read. Sci-fi dystopian YA fiction about sisters. Let’s do this. See you all in June.
This is not the kind of werewolf you’ll find in this book.