Exploring Internal Strength and External Resilience in the Select Short Stories of Anne Finger’s Basic Skills

Abstract

This paper analyzes polio survivor and disability activist Anne Finger’s semi-autobiographical select stories. Through her narrative style she brings to limelight how she turns over her life and other disabled individuals’ lives from resilience to strength in the short story collection, Basic Skills.  The present paper deals with three stories namely Like the Hully- Gully but Not So Slow, Abortion, and Basic Skills. As a physically challenged woman she pours out her melancholic life experiences in her stories. She narrates the strength of differently abled women to figure out that physical trauma is more important than mental energy, because physical trauma leads to mental empowerment. Abortion is a short story that predominantly discusses abortion, which is a requisite legal right for women. The study of disability experiences brings out the significant changes of an individual which is the interaction between her life and writing. The problem of disability arises from her physical flaws, the way her own family treats, and economic and everyday struggles which turn over into external resilience through inward force.