Disability, Representation and Voice of Resilience: A Study of Christy Brown's My Left Foot

Literature plays a significant role in representing the body, and its literary interventions transform perspectives on and practices regarding disability, further reshaping society's stance. Literature and history have ample examples of the achievements of disabled persons, but they too had to undergo rejection, exclusion and defiance before positioning themselves into the mainstream. Christy Brown suffered from cerebral palsy and authored a memoir, My Left Foot, which is an example of the struggle to break society’s preconceived notions about disability. His medical condition segregated him from the immediate social environment. Despite facing constant challenges, Christy produced a text that showcases existing social patterns and further raises the voice for the beliefs to be re-examined or altered. Marginalisation and exclusion reduce the opportunities to contribute productively. The marginalisation of the disabled describes the way disability is understood in the international context and discourses. The lives of the disabled have been a history of silence, further relating to Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’. The present paper will discuss disability not as a feature of ‘dysfunctional’ bodies and minds, but as a creation of social structure. Secondly, it will examine how literature represents and constructs the concept of disability and can serve as a tool for inclusivity. Thirdly, the study will examine the silence, representation, and socio-cultural dimensions of My Left Foot to highlight the factors that bridge the gap between individual and societal beliefs.