Lost in Narrative: Representations of Mental Disability in Selected Malawian Literary Texts

Abstract

This article examines the portrayal of mental disability in Malawian literature. Through a critical analysis of selected poetry, short stories, and plays, the article argues that in the Malawian literary imagination, mental disability is usually appropriated as a metaphor, for humour, and/ or as a narrative strategy through which writers communicate their intended messages. As a result, the complex nature of mental disability and the subjectivities of the mentally disabled are traded off against their narrative usefulness. Such appropriation of mental illness, by using it as a metaphor, an object of humour, and as part of narrative style, perpetuates Malawian society’s general (dis)regard of mental illness as a disease.