Representations of Disability in South Asian Diasporic Literature

Abstract

This presentation will examine disability as an intersectional category in South Asian diasporic writing, exploring fiction that details the impact of physical disability and invisible mental and psychological disability in fiction and the way in which affected individuals and their families struggle against resulting difficulties, including stigmas and taboos (in novels such as Akhil Sharma’s Family Life, Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters, and Sharon Bala’s The Boat People) and poetry about disability and how it can relate to intersectionality (in the work of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha). In these works, matters of class, sexuality, displacement, trauma, and age all are linked with disability, and this suggests that the role of disability in South Asian diasporic writing is more substantial than is often acknowledged.