Mapping Out the Monstrosity of Disabled Bodies in Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death (2020) and Nicholas’ Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body (2018)

This comparative book review explores the concept of monstrosity in Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death (2020) and Nicholas’ Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body (2018). This analysis contrasts how Black bodies, seen as congenitally disabled and ‘enfreaked’ bodies exhibited in sideshows, are discursively framed in monstrous terms. This conception began at birth, continuing to their eventual staging and display upon auction blocks (the enslaved) or sideshow stages (the enfreaked). This review is organized as follows: a brief and general summation of both texts, a discussion of the thematic similarities between them, and a summary of what each text brings to our understanding of disability. Keywords: Slavery, disability, sideshows, freaks