20-Year-Old Artist is Filling Books with Superheroes with Disabilities

 

A 20-year-old from South Jersey is creating comic books in honor of her friend with special needs. Trinity Jagdeo is an author and illustrator, and she’s been using her skills to turn special needs children into superheroes.

The idea was inspired by her best friend, Alexus Dick, who she met in kindergarten 14 years ago. Dick has spinal muscular atrophy, a rare disease that weakens muscles all over the body and limits life expectancy to under 30 years. She now spends most of her time in bed, without enough strength to make it into her wheelchair.

While Dick was undergoing six months of treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Jagdeo came up with the idea of a book in which the main character was a superhero with a disability  She wanted someone for her friend to relate to, someone who could inspire her, and because she couldn’t find one, she ended up creating one.

“Seeing what my best friend was going through, I wanted to do more for others like her,” she told TODAY. “We’d watched all of the movies that she had lined in her room, and I took note of how drained she was. She had nobody to look up to while she was going through that battle.”

Jagdeo first reached out to Disney, asking for more characters with disabilities or special needs. “I wrote them letters, made YouTube videos. I didn’t receive a response, so I decided to create my own non-profit, and I began writing and illustrating my own books that featured local special-needs kids.”

When Alexus saw Trinity’s comic books, she said it was one of the best gifts a child could ever receive. Then, Jagdeo’s mom helped her take the next steps to publish the books – by registering her business.

In 2018, Jagdeo self-published her first book, Alice the Ace, using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service.

Jagdeo published book number four — Victorious Victor — this year, about a character on the autism spectrum. The character is based on Victor Perez, a member of her church in Vineland, New Jersey, where they both live.

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by @trinity.jagdeo

 

Jagdeo says her dream is to create more books and to get them onto the shelves of Barnes and Noble. But in the meantime, she plans to “continue to advocate for and amplify the voices of those who we seldom see in books and on TV.”

Watch the video below.

 

Recommended Posts