The best novels about disability human rights in the Global South

I love reading and teaching this classic of postcolonial literature. Written in spare, accessible style on the eve of Nigerian independence from Britain, Achebe tells the story of British colonization of an Igbo clan in Southeast Nigeria near the end of the 19th century. Even as the novel portrays the appalling damages of European colonialism, it subtly critiques the traditional Igbo exclusion of disabled people. It demonstrates one of the paradoxes of human rights: victims of human rights abuses can also be perpetrators of them. The British missionaries first gain a foothold by welcoming those stigmatized people marginalized by the Umoufians, indicating how Achebe promotes compassion of all people.

I frequently teach Rushdie and this is his best book. Winner of the Booker Prize, Midnight’s Children is a playful epic novel that uses magic elements to tell the tale of India’s independence from British colonization in the mid-20th century. Through a first-person disabled narrator, it potentially adds to readers’ imaginative engagement with disability. Matters are complicated, though, because of narrator Saleem’s claims of having fantastic telepathic powers might actually make it harder for readers to identify with him. The novel depicts disability in complex ways, where disabled people simultaneously are powerful figures who offer hope for the newly independent Indian nation and vulnerable citizens almost always marginalized and victimized by society. Ultimately the novel promotes respect toward disabled people, which fits in with campaigns for disability justice.🎯

Written by a White South African after the end of apartheid in 1990, this novel is both troubling and moving. You won’t forget it anytime soon. It differs from the above novels in that it offers a disabled character, Pollux, who is more aggressive and takes part in a horrifying gang rape. Earlier in the novel, the White protagonist, David, rapes one of his college students, making him and Pollux somewhat parallel figures. Metaphorically, Pollux could be said to represent the injustices of apartheid. David contends with not just personal violence, but also reckonings of the history of Black oppression in South Africa. A disabled figure raises ethical questions about human rights in this novel, which paved the way for Coetzee to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.   

This is another novel I enjoy teaching; students respond well to it. Desai excels in giving detailed domestic pictures of life in India. Here she recounts how an ungainly disabled daughter with what seems to be epilepsy and a learning disability is largely kept out of sight by her upper-middle-class family in the 20th century. The daughter, Uma, goes away with assorted other characters, finding a measure of freedom, but invariably needs to return to her parents’ confining house. At the end of the novel, she is largely taking care of them. Desai shows what we might call a “feminist ethic of care” as she writes of a disabled woman as interesting and worthy of sustained attention, which implicitly feeds into advocates’ contention of the value of all disabled people.

This collection of academic essays gives an incisive overview of the newly emergent field of literature and human rights, which I build upon in my book. Contributors include pioneering scholars like James Dawes, Elizabeth Swanson, and Alexandra S. Moore. They have chapters exploring the relationship between literature and rights, the role of emotions in the process, and more. The collection does not consider disability much, but is a good introduction for someone who wants to learn more about an exciting academic field.