Browsing by Subject "cerebral palsy"

This thesis examines the development of Christy Brown’s authorial identity in his autobiography, My Left Foot. In addition to being an author and painter, Brown was a person with disabilities. His development as an author and as a person is tied to different phases of life and to his evolving understanding of disability. While My Left Foot was published over seventy years ago, it still has its merits as a work which discusses the lived experience of being disabled. With the help of secondary and three other primary sources, My Left Foot is situated into the continuum of Irish disability writing and cerebral palsy literature in particular. The main findings of this thesis are that while the pre-existing disability models Brown had access to were limited, My Left Foot contains parts which challenged able-bodied notions of disability. This he did by challenging the expectations of other family members, while also by subtly criticising the people that he met. The language that Brown used to discuss disability was a product of his time, but the most important themes are easily recognised, such as questions of bodily difference, self-esteem and physical and mental needs. What is more, Brown created a life course for himself, which, although it differed from the lives of his siblings and other able-bodied people, was preferrable to him. Art and literature had a central place in Brown’s life, which sets him apart from other writers who had cerebral palsy. Brown was also one of the first people with disabilities in Ireland who published an autobiography – and he did so while still being young and in the middle of the events, which allowed him to spark social discussion about disability in his time. This thesis shows that Brown was a person who kept looking for a possibility to communicate his thoughts to a wider public. My Left Foot is a testament to this, while also chronicling the development of Brown as a person and an author who wanted to play his part in the world.