Writing an Illness Narrative and Negotiating Identity: A Kuwaiti Academic/Author’s Journey

ABSTRACT

This essay begins by discussing illness narratives in literature. Given the lack of illness narratives in Arabic literature and Anglophone literature, the author has written a collection of short stories, which are partly a memoir dealing with her own disability. The work is entitled Notes on the Flesh. It deals with illness and disability in Kuwait and the Middle East in general. Using critical theory such as Arthur Frank’s work on storytelling and writing the self and body, this essay interrogates the process of healing, self-writing, and the reception of a work on disability. Writing women’s lives is crucial, and even more so is the writing of disabled female protagonists into the existing literature on women. Only through creative writing is there a sense of reclaiming voice and agency. The author charts her journey through academia, women’s studies, disability studies, and how life writing became an integral part of survival.

KEYWORDS:

• Writing the self
• disability
• illness narrative
• Arab women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Shahd Alshammari is an Assistant Professor of English Literature. She has authored Literary Madness: British, Postcolonial and Bedouin Women’s Writing (Cambridge Scholars, UK, 2016), Notes on the Flesh (2017) and Once Upon a Life … There Was Time (Createspace, 2018). Her research interests include disability studies and gender. She is currently working on a collection of stories dealing with madness and gender. Blog: www.drshahdalshammari.wordpress.com.

ORCID

Shahd Alshammari http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2364-3231