In the poem, entitled What you mourn by Sheila Black, we see a woman that contemplates the year that her legs were straightened and how unhappy she was with her new able body. The writer allows for a different perspective on disability than how it is usually depicted within literature. The speaker is not upset that she is not able bodied like usually seen, but rather that she explains show she would have nested and embraced her disabled body before it was”fixed”. It is clear that what the speaker mourns is the disabled body that she once inhabited. Black expresses the love for her disabled body and twists the narrative of the socially constructed body.
The speaker is told that she will now “walk straight on her wedding day” (lines 3-4), implying that disability is in juxtaposition with normalcy and even happiness. Furthermore, that when a body is physically impaired it needs to be “fixed” for the purpose of getting closer to “normal” as possible. Highlighting Siebers’ assertion that social constructed attitudes of an institution determine the greater biological representation of the body’s reality (Siebers 173). He explains that we are over critical of the body and its symbolic nature to be, do, and representation within society. Siebers’ also quotes Thomson as she points out the discourse of disability as it is “the unothortox made flesh, refusing to be normalized, neutralized or homogenized” (Siebers 174). Furthermore, the poem exemplifies the importance of the idealized body as it relates to our sense of self and identity.
The reader also calls upon the contention of “naming” as it relates to the identity of any disabled persons. “Crippled they called us when I was young later the word disabled and then differently abled, but those names all given by outsiders, none of whom could imagine that the crooked body they spoke of …” (lines 17-19). Black is employing the controversial nature to which individuals are usually providing labels for the people that should be labeling themselves. The speaker connects her experience within her “old” body to that of a “beloved imperfect home country” (line 23- 27). Demonstrating that she noticed the difficulty and discourses that she had faced within her disabled body, but she embraced it anyway, even though she was forced out of it. Ironically, the speaker also expresses the exile she feels within her old body and the imprisonment that she feels within her new body (lines 11-13). One can imply that the author was trying to have the reader grasp the societal pressure of having a “normal”and able body.
In both Black and Siebers’ writings we see the significance of the body, to which disability transforms ideals about identity, language, social and political understandings. Both Black and Siebers explain the detrimental ways in which society overtly project normative values unto persons with disabilities and how these subtle structures can often exclude them. In addition, further abdicating the basic thoughts and assumptions that surround a disabled bodies experiences.
Word Count: 506
I Pledge, Cayla Stroud.
