Throughout Abhishek Anicca’s The Grammar of My Body: A Memoir (Penguin Random House) the writer, poet and spoken word artiste approaches his experiences with fierce honesty. This journey travels through a series of 41 essays written over the last five years about coming to terms with locomotor disability and chronic illness in a society that embodies ableism. The book’s release this month coincides with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1992 and observed annually on December 3.

Dismantling the narrative

Through the essays, you encounter Anicca’s truth as a direct challenge to and rejection of inspirational narratives, the ableist expectation to ‘overcome’ disability; an approach that disregards the struggles of persons with disability, in order to make disabled experiences palatable and normative while sidestepping the responsibility of taking down an exclusive societal structure.