A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

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extent, you know, I spent… until my mid-thirties really, battling him… battling him
and his denial… but there was just no point… but it‟s quite painful, really, not being
able to be who I am… in my own family… it‟s fucking awful, really… in that
sense… and it makes me feel quite resentful… (l.403ff.)
Ali describes the sense of anxiety he experienced at school in Whitley Bay at the time he
became conscious of what was later identified as dyslexia, but during which he had neither
words nor understanding to explain why he was having difficulties with learning:
I remember I used to get really, really frustrated and I thought it‟s just
hormones, getting really angry... it was almost as if to say to the staff I‟ve got a
problem and you‟re not doing anything about it... and I remember, I did it for a good
few months... and it was never … the teacher never actually came back to me and
talked … you know... “Have you got a problem with anything?”... and I think that, at
the time in my life when I was looking for … maybe I have got a problem or maybe
it‟s just me, I just can‟t do the work... you know, and because of that it led to this
negative decline with me thinking I‟m useless, I can‟t do anything... (l.246ff.)
When normality is constructed as an ideal for young people (Priestley, 2003), to come to a
conclusion for yourself that there is something „wrong‟ with the self is a an isolating
experience. To define yourself against the norm in terms of the stigmatised identity of
disability will not seem an attractive proposition. While normality is presumed within a
mainstream school context, abnormality will not be actively looked for. To have to deal with
a dawning self-awareness of impairment that is unrecognised by others not only seems like a
big thing. It is a big thing.
Cultural isolation
Surinder describes the isolation she has experienced as an Asian disabled woman who has
had to suppress her ethnic identity because she has found few opportunities to feel accepted
as a disabled woman within the Asian community:
there were no Asian places that I could go to where I could speak to people
regarding the multiple barriers, rather than just the one… so I dealt with my
diagnosis rather than my cultural identity… I kind of suppressed that because I