https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.115
Visualizing Resilience: Disability, Trauma, and Agency in Sriram Jagannath’s Mai: A Graphic Novel (2018)
MS. NOBLE A. PALIATH
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Sacred Heart College (Autonomous), Chalakudy
Affiliated to the University of Calicut
Part-time Research Scholar
Department of English
Vimala College (Autonomous), Thrissur
Abstract: This paper examines the visual and narrative construction of resilience in Sriram Jagannath’s Mai: A Graphic Novel, focusing on the intersections of disability, trauma, and agency. Through a close reading of the graphic form, it explores how the protagonist’s embodied experience of disability is not merely depicted as suffering but as a dynamic site of resistance and self-fashioning. The study argues that Jagannath employs visual strategies—such as fragmented panels, shifting perspectives, and symbolic imagery—to render trauma as both disruptive and generative. Rather than reinforcing reductive stereotypes, the text foregrounds the protagonist’s agency, emphasizing her capacity to negotiate oppressive social structures and reclaim narrative control. The paper situates the novel within contemporary disability studies and trauma theory, highlighting how the medium of the graphic novel enables a nuanced articulation of pain, memory, and survival. Ultimately, Mai: A Graphic Novel emerges as a critical intervention that challenges normative representations of disability by centering resilience as an evolving, relational process shaped by both vulnerability and strength.
Keywords: Disability, Trauma, Resilience, Agency, Graphic Novel, Visual Narrative, Embodiment, Resistance
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