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Disability and Sex: Nepali Disabled Women Writers and Their Quest for the Self
Tulasi Acharya
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2020.02.004
South Georgia State College, Douglas, GA, USA
The paper studied the experiences of disability and sexuality in the works of two disabled women writers from Nepal: Jhamak Ghimire and Parijaat (Bishnu Kumari Waiwa). Jhamak Ghimire’s autobiographical works and Parijat’s novels and poems presented their experiences as the disabled gendered subjects in Nepali society. Using the narrative analysis method, I analyzed Ghimire’s Jiwan Kadaki Phool and Samaya-Bimba and Parijat’s Shirishko Phool and Mahattahin and other poems. I asked: How did these writers define the concept of disability and desire for love and sex? and how did their definitions challenge the pre-existing notions of the disabled subjects’ identities and desires, and dispel the myth of disability as asexual? In representations, the disabled people appear as asexual subjects and, therefore, unfit for sex and marriage. The paper argued that Ghimire and Parijat resisted such discourses and unveiled the disabled women’s desires and emotions that people in general failed to acknowledge. Both writers defined the disabled bodies as the site of love, sexuality, and several emotions associated with desire. Reading their texts, I demonstrated how they challenged the normative assumptions about their bodies and explored their sexual selves and gendered identity. By writing about their own bodies and desires in their narratives, Ghimire and Parijat searched for the disabled women’s sexual identity in Nepal.
women with disabilities, Nepal, Parijaat, Ghamak Ghimire, disability, asexual, narratives, identity, self
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