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

Hazel struggled to recall any other disabled people she had encountered during her childhood
but eventually remembered:
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two sisters that lived, I suppose, about half a mile away from me, and they were
adults when I was a child… who, I suppose, looking back, yes, they did have a
disability, because I can visualise in my mind that they used to walk along the road
chuntering… and they walked with a limp… and they were obviously living with a
disability in the area… but I didn‟t know them particularly… and no, actually, I
wasn‟t aware of people living with a disability round my area… (l.1:96ff.)
Similarly, Rose had difficulty remembering any disabled people in the Derbyshire town
where she grew up other than:
a little boy… well, a big boy… who was referred to by my mother as a mongal…
who was wheeled around the town we lived in… in a push chair… and who used to
be parked outside the chemist occasionally when I had to go on errands for my
mother… and he was just left there… and we were told not to talk to him… so, in
fact, that was my earliest experience of disability… but I didn‟t really think about
it… he was just an oddity… (l.1.53ff.)
While these accounts suggest that some people with impairments were, in fact, present
within ordinary community life, it seems they were rarely seen and were encountered as
freaks. The two sisters and the boy with learning difficulties are remembered because it was
unusual to see disabled people at all. Rose suggests that:
I think that one of the reasons my mother said that we weren‟t to talk to the mongal
boy was fear on her part… but also… almost a fear of contamination… you know, I
had a sense of… something might happen to us if we talked to him… (l.1.99)
Birmingham-raised Surinder also talks about a fear of contamination, citing this as a reason
why people with impairments and long-term conditions are often avoided within Asian
communities (l.1:98ff.) She speaks of her first recollection of seeing a disabled person, at
the age of nine during a family visit to the Punjab:
I think it was, like, quite surprising and shocking, because I wasn‟t expecting it and I
didn‟t know it because in my environment, in my world at the age of nine everybody
was okay … everybody was perfect, everybody was … erm … I didn‟t see people
with disabilities… they weren‟t … they definitely weren‟t seen… erm… because in
the Asian culture …erm .. it‟s a shameful thing, it‟s a thing that you wouldn‟t