They\u2019ve previously written books I Am Autistic and This Is ADHD – and it\u2019s thanks to their publishers, Allen & Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand, that Moriah was diagnosed with dyslexia in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey floated the idea of a dyslexia book, and I was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019m dyslexic anyway\u2019, and so from there I decided to go and get an assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Moriah, what\u2019s day-to-day life like with dyslexia?<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t, for the life of me, read stuff out loud. The words won\u2019t come out right. I stutter, I can\u2019t read it, I read them in the wrong order. And when I do read, I can\u2019t process what I\u2019ve read. It\u2019s like reading a foreign language. I can say it, I can read it, but I don\u2019t actually know what it means, and so that\u2019s made reading very difficult. <\/p>\n
\u201cI got through all of high school without reading a single book. I avoid reading a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moriah says it can take a long time to learn new words. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I do, I often learn them incorrectly, just trying to judge based on the context in which it\u2019s used.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, they say there are positives to having dyslexia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does mean I\u2019m quite good at problem-solving and finding my way around different things, finding alternative ways to learn information or do my job. It does make me quite creative. I like those parts of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moriah drew on their own experiences, advice from an educational psychologist, and conversations with people with dyslexia and their family members to write and illustrate the book.<\/p>\n
Chanelle Moriah hopes their newest book I Am Dyslexic can help Kiwis understand dyslexia better. Photo \/ Judah Plester<\/p>\n
They say of the three they\u2019ve published, this book was \u201dhonestly the hardest” they\u2019ve written because of the lack of information available about dyslexia, adding the only reason they could find information was because they knew what to look for.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of it was based on conversations or my own experience or breaking down each trait and thinking about it quite logically and how that\u2019s going to impact you – and then from there, seeing if there was information that backed up how I had processed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moriah says there aren\u2019t many resources available to those with dyslexia, particularly in workplaces.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the employment space, there\u2019s definitely this attitude of \u2018you manage it yourself\u2019. There\u2019s not really a lot of accommodation around it, not a lot of understanding. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople will see someone who\u2019s dyslexic and they\u2019ll go, \u2018Oh, well, you can\u2019t do this job because you can\u2019t read, and it\u2019s your problem to manage that\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not one that there\u2019s a lot of support for, which I hoped I could talk about a bit with this book and talk about ways that people might accommodate it, because I understand that if you don\u2019t really understand what dyslexia is, it\u2019s hard to see how you might accommodate someone who is dyslexic.\u201d<\/p>\n
I Am Dyslexic is Wellington writer Chanelle Moriah’s third book. Photo \/ Allen & Unwin New Zealand<\/p>\n
Moriah also works at Autism New Zealand as a research and advocacy advisor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my position, there are two of us in the same role, and my co-worker does the parts that involve lots of reading, and I do the parts that don\u2019t… we\u2019ve kind of divided the tasks in a way that suits our strengths, but in any other setting, I would not be able to do this job.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are many misconceptions about what dyslexia actually is, Moriah says.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople see it as you can\u2019t read, or the words get mixed up on a page, or you can\u2019t learn. I\u2019ve had conversations where people are under the impression that you have to improve your dyslexia to be able to learn things. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019ve said to them, \u2018Well, no, I will always be dyslexic. I will always struggle with reading. I find other ways to learn it. Just because I can\u2019t learn it that way, doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t learn it another way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, Moriah hopes this book will help change that perception.<\/p>\n
The book explains the many different ways dyslexia can present and is designed like a journal, with space to draw or write down your thoughts in response.<\/p>\n
Moriah has tried to make it accessible for dyslexic people. There are boxes where you can write and draw, which breaks up the text and allows readers to process the information in whatever way works best for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike my other books, it\u2019s designed to be personalised because everyone\u2019s experience with each condition is going to be so different. I can\u2019t write one book that describes everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fully recognise the irony of the situation where dyslexic people are probably not going to read the book,\u201d Moriah adds with a laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess my hope was more that those who do read it, who are maybe not dyslexic, gain a bit of understanding of it and how to then implement some different strategies around people who are dyslexic.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if people who are dyslexic happen to manage to read my book, they might learn a thing or two about how to help themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethany Reitsma is a lifestyle writer who has been with the NZ Herald since 2019. She specialises in all things health and wellbeing and is passionate about telling Kiwis\u2019 real-life stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They\u2019ve previously written books I Am Autistic and This Is ADHD – and it\u2019s thanks to their publishers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17311,1975,5195,83567,797,5810,156,8455,302,13840,83568,111,139,69,88,61,18324,6923,102],"class_list":["post-118019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-17311","tag-at","tag-be","tag-chanelle","tag-diagnosed","tag-dyslexia","tag-entertainment","tag-getting","tag-its","tag-like","tag-moriah","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-surprise","tag-to","tag-wasnt","tag-what","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}