https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.073
Regaining Self-Identity: Disability and Cultural Narratives in Select Indian Autobiographies
DEVADATHAN E V
Research Scholar
Department of English & Comparative Literature
Central University of Kerala
Abstract: This paper examines how Indian disability autobiographies function as powerful sites of identity reclamation, cultural resistance, and narrative self-fashioning. Situated within the interdisciplinary framework of Disability Studies and Life Writing theory, the study explores how autobiographical narratives authored by persons with disabilities challenge deeply rooted cultural constructions of normalcy, dependency, and bodily worth in Indian society. Rather than presenting disability through the dominant medical or charitable lens, these texts foreground agency, voice, and self-definition, transforming personal storytelling into a form of social critique.
Focusing primarily on works such as One Little Finger by Malini Chib and No Looking Back by Shivani Gupta, the paper analyzes how life writing becomes a medium through which disabled authors resist imposed identities of helplessness and social marginality. These narratives articulate the lived experience of negotiating family expectations, educational barriers, public spaces, and social attitudes shaped by stigma and paternalism. Through acts of narration, the authors reconstruct the self not as an object of care or pity but as a subject capable of desire, ambition, and intellectual authority.
The study draws on the social model of disability to demonstrate how exclusion emerges not from bodily impairment alone but from inaccessible environments and entrenched ableist attitudes. At the same time, narrative identity theory is employed to show how autobiographical writing enables the reconstitution of selfhood through memory, reflection, and meaning-making. The paper argues that these texts challenge the notion of the “normal body” as a cultural ideal and expand the understanding of embodiment, independence, and dignity within the Indian socio-cultural context. By foregrounding first-person disability narratives as significant literary and cultural texts, this study positions Indian disability life writing as a crucial intervention in both literary discourse and social thought.
These autobiographies do more than recount individual struggle; they reshape cultural perceptions of disability, advocate for inclusion, and assert the right of disabled individuals to define their own identities. Ultimately, the paper contends that disability life writing in India contributes to a more humane, equitable, and pluralistic understanding of the self and society.
Keywords: disability life writing, Indian disability autobiographies, narrative identity, social model of disability, ableism and representation
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