ABSTRACT
A story: On a breezy afternoon one April I met with “Samantha,” a student in an undergraduate course on literature and disability, to talk about her paper on cultural images of burn survivors. After showing me her draft, she remained, eager to talk about issues of disability and visibility, about her own experience as a person who appears “normal” until one looks closely enough to see the scars on her jaw and neck, the puckered skin that disappears under the neck of her T-shirt and reappears on her arm and wrist. Since I almost always look “normal” despite my disabling chronic illness, I sympathized with her struggle over how and when to come out about her disability identity. “My parents don’t understand why I would call myself disabled,” Samantha said matter-of-factly; then she added with a mischievous grin, “In fact, there are two basic things my family just doesn’t want to accept: that my cousin is gay and that I’m disabled. So we’re going to take a picture of ourselves at a gay pride march next month and send it to them.”
