The Double Prosthesis: Supercrip Narratives and the Use of Disability as Storytelling Crutch in Indian Children's Stories

Ramendra Kumar’s Against All Odds (2017) and Soumya Rajendran’s Wings to Fly (2006) are simple and inspirational children's stories. However, an in-depth analysis reveals that both stories adapted the supercrip model of disability. Both stories utilized their protagonists' disabilities as narrative prosthesis and framed the plot in such a way that the protagonists triumph over their tragedy, i.e, their disability. The fundamental idea of each story relies on the protagonist's indomitable will to overcome their disability, culminating in their victory. They focused so much on their heroic triumph that they undermined the disabled protagonists’ genuine experience of pain and suffering. As a result, it reduced disability to a personal tragedy that must be erased to be accepted. These stories are about disability, but they fail to promote inclusivity or affirm disability as a distinct social identity. Instead, they perpetuate harmful stereotypes by using disability as a plot device to create a feel-good narrative for non-disabled readers and thereby inspire them through tales of overcoming. Karthik, in Against All Odds, and Malathi, in Wings to Fly, tried to erase their disability and did something extraordinary for themselves. Nevertheless, they are accepted not for who and what they are, but for the remarkable achievement of defeating their disability. This article argues that beneath the inspirational surface, these two stories function as narrative prostheses, exploiting disability to craft super-crip stories that conceal the realities of ableism. The stories, thus, reinforce ableist stereotypes rather than confronting ableism or portraying disability with authenticity and inclusivity.