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

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display… you stay indoors and you don‟t show such a shameful thing…. (l.58ff.)
Surinder states that this stigmatisation arises within Asian communities not just from fears
about health but from strongly-held religious beliefs:
it‟s something… erm … which you could link to past lives and maybe have done
something which is very sinful and therefore you‟re being punished in this life for …
erm … what you‟ve done in the past (l.75ff.).
The negativity about disabled people conveyed by parents and communities was presumably
taken on board and learned as a natural and appropriate response. Impairment was something
to be feared, ignored, hidden or turned away from.
Disability was about other people, not about us
Growing up in family situations where the presence of disability was denied was a feature of
Ben and Helen‟s accounts. Describing his Coventry upbringing, Ben talks about the way his
grandfather was never considered disabled in spite of the fact that he had severe bronchitis
and mobility restrictions:
What I didn‟t really recognize, really, was the disability in my family… my
grandfather never went out… and I was used to the apparatus of disability around…
whenever I visited my grandparents… the apparatus around him, the oxygen bottle
in the corner, the commode downstairs… and knowing that he had to be helped
upstairs… and that he never went out in his older days…. I didn‟t associate that with
disability, that was just sort of normality for my grandparents… and I don‟t think…I
just related to my granddad as an ordinary person... and, I later learnt actually,
though, from my mum, when my mum first started using a wheelchair, that he was
ashamed to go out in a wheelchair… (l.1.25ff.)
Ben‟s grandfather preferred the isolation and limitation of activities resulting from self-
imposed confinement within his own home to the shame of being seen by others outside in
his wheelchair. He would rather appear relatively independent within his own home than
suffer the ignominy of appearing disabled in others‟ eyes.
Helen tells of how her mother, a General Practitioner in the highlands, has gone to lengths to
keep her own mental health problem a secret even from those closest to her:
I thought my mum‟s depression was a fairly well-known fact… but we went down