Children Literature: Reimagining Disability and Adopting Inclusive Discourses in Sara Ismail’s Listen to the Silence and Kazm Koy’s Shanogary Zhyan

Abstract

This paper entitled Children Literature: Reimagining Disability and Adopting Inclusive Discourses in Sara Ismail’s Listen to the Silence and Kazm Koy’s Shanogary Zhyan, is an attempt to focus on the significance of children's literature in establishing inclusive discourses and capturing the sense of diversity by social and cultural groups. Using disabled critical theory in dialogue with two English and Kurdish children's poems, Listen to the Silence (2012) and Shanogary Zhyan (2007), this paper examines the literary values and disciplines towards discussing the way literature acts as a performative space in enlightening individuals from an early age.  Given this, this paper argues the functionality of literature in playing an innovative educational site where social, cultural and conventional norms and stereotypes concerning people with special needs are reimagined and taught. Literature is therefore argued to constitute inclusive communities within a specific society. It further maintains that the chosen texts showcase the facts whereby discriminatory discourses of disability stem from social constructions rather than natural phenomena. Children's literature can thus have a strong impression on the new generation’s mindsets and visions towards adopting an inclusive, humane discourse while viewing people with special needs. Correspondingly, by exploring English and Kurdish poems under examination, this paper concludes that children's literature is not only a means of personal reflection but rather a site of production where most of the pre-given worldviews and pre-assumptive concerns regarding social components are revisited, reimagined, and redirected.