UCLA

This dissertation analyzes memoirs written by parents of children with disabilities, a subgenre of “special needs” memoirs. Using tools of narrative analysis and feminist interpretive methods, I contextualize my analyses to the social, political, and economic conditions that enable, or limit, recognition of non-normative identities and embodiments. I demonstrate that the figure of the disabled child uniquely articulates how gender, heterosexuality, and typical ability are mutually constituted, and significantly, how the life stages of childhood and adulthood are not only relational, but made intelligible by developmental paradigms that assume heteronormative-ability. In the absence of typical ability, heteronormativity is a narrative device that causes disabled children to “overcome” their disabilities and achieve a “normal” childhood (and future normal adulthood). I organize “special needs” memoirs according to three narrative registers: the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the disruptive. My analyses show how these narrative templates, which intend to be recuperative and to promote inclusion, inscribe disabled children into a normative life course overdetermined by limited narratives of progress, individualism, and autonomy. I demonstrate that the subgenre of parenting memoirs as a whole, as well as the narrative templates that dominate it, align with neoliberalism’s mandates for self-improvement and to make a project of one’s life.