Abstract
The literature has sometimes portrayed queer/disabled people as the “Other.” People with disabilities and queer sexualities are frequently subject to ridicule and abuse. Historically, the literature has aided in the social constructionism of disability phenomena in society by depicting the disabled as someone harmful and undesirable. Furthermore, traditional representations of queer and/or disabled existence have frequently been biased and are usually about how the “able-bodied” or the so-called normal people perceive people with diverse bodies and queer sexualities. However, it has been conspicuously silent regarding the plight of people with disabilities and queer sexualities. In a departure from traditional representations of queer and/or disabled existence, Firdaus Kanga presents a first-hand account of the lived experiences of his precarious life in the Indian sociocultural context and beyond. He has to his credit a series of critically acclaimed books such as Trying to Grow (1990), Heaven on Wheels (1991), The Godmen (1995), and The Surprise Ending (1996). As a severely disabled individual suffering from a crippling disease called osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bones disease), Trying to Grow (1990), a semiautobiographical novel, is a narrative of his lived experiences of disability and tryst with queer sexuality. While his other work, Heaven on Wheels (1991), is a discourse on queer sexuality and disability from the perspective of queer and disabled existence. Kanga critiques the ableist society’s treatment of the queer and the disabled, which is tantamount to human rights abuse.
Highlights
Firdaus Kanga is a marginalized writer, and the stereotypical ‘Other’
Discourses of disability, sexuality, and Human Rights issues related to the queer and/or disabled people have remained neglected in literary narratives
Kanga’s narrative of his lived experience, the experience of living inside a disabled body, and that of his experience of queer sexuality is a unique expression of reality
Summary
Firdaus Kanga is a marginalized writer, and the stereotypical ‘Other’. Kanga’s semi-autobiographical novel Trying to Grow (1990) is an unusual novel. In a world dominated by abled and heterosexual people, Kanga as an individual and as a writer is a departure from the ‘norms’, literally and figuratively His physicality does not belong to or fall under the category of the accepted norms of what is considered to be the ‘normal body’ or ‘able-bodied’ and for this reason in every aspect of life, he faces discrimination. Davis’ Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body is a significant theoretical intervention that throws light on the existence of a restrictive regime in the society in the form of norms, normal, and normality that creates the phenomena of queer and disability in the society [2] This restrictive regime is an exclusionary process alienating people with disabilities from everyday life and violates their basic Human Rights. An attempt has been made to re/read Kanga’s works from the lens of the intersectionality of Human Rights, disability and queer sexuality in literature by focusing on the alienation, precarity and alterity in the lived experiences of Kanga
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