John H. Richardson: In The Little World: A True Story Of Dwarfs, Love, And Trouble

John H. Richardson first delved into the world of dwarfism as an Esquire reporter covering the annual convention of the Little People Of America. Hanging out in Atlanta with more than 1,000 dwarfs, he found countless tales of typical conventioneering: dwarfs dancing to bad cover bands, getting drunk, finding friends, making enemies, trying to get laid. Determined not to retread patronizing stories of "big hearts in little people," he wrote about the torments of dwarfs struggling to balance the shock of their shared experience with the pressure of having a year's worth of amorous desires and dreams of normalcy compressed into one week. Frank and unflinching in its description of the weirdness of it all, the story made for a memorable magazine piece. But In The Little World builds that piece into an enormously profound meditation on disability, the powers of difference, and the messy consequences of honesty in the face of harsh truth. The book begins at the convention, where Richardson latches onto a cast of characters who, with varying degrees of eagerness, discuss the realities of rising chest-high to most of the "tall world." Richardson spent two years with the book's primary characters: Jocelyn, a 16-year-old Australian who endures multiple rounds of emergency surgery while watching her desperately doting mother fall to pieces; Michael, a conflicted young actor trying to woo a fellow dwarf sweetheart away from the world of tall men; and Andrea, a wickedly smart young woman who challenges the author's motives in deeply philosophical correspondences. The result is a book that becomes more universal as its parts fan out in increasingly personal directions. As the central figure pulling such disparate stories together, Richardson becomes obsessed with staring into the sun. He wrestles with a "disorienting mix of shame and exhilaration" as his disarming honesty earns equal amounts of resentment and respect from his subjects. In a fumbling attempt to reconcile his arguably sadistic frankness with the fact that many dwarfs "sense that the sweetness of elves is a covert way to de-fang them, to evade questions about justice and the limits of our decency," Richardson unearths deep-rooted strengths and weaknesses in both his newfound friends and himself. Eventually, everybody involved is forced to address the evolutionary weight of notions of beauty and difference, as well as humanity's alternately heartbreaking and inspiring potential to add grace notes to the hard logic of science. In The Little World starts out as a book about dwarfs, but it ends up evolving into a story about the costs of people growing into and out of themselves.