Mapping Out the Monstrosity of Disabled Bodies in Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death (2020) and Nicholas’ Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body (2018)

Authors

  • Greg Procknow PhD Candidate, Critical Disability Studies, York University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/1918-6215.39773

Abstract

This comparative book review explores the concept of monstrosity in Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death (2020) and Nicholas’ Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body (2018). This analysis contrasts how Black bodies, seen as congenitally disabled and ‘enfreaked’ bodies exhibited in sideshows, are discursively framed in monstrous terms. This conception began at birth, continuing to their eventual staging and display upon auction blocks (the enslaved) or sideshow stages (the enfreaked). This review is organized as follows: a brief and general summation of both texts, a discussion of the thematic similarities between them, and a summary of what each text brings to our understanding of disability.

Keywords: Slavery, disability, sideshows, freaks

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Published

2025-05-07

How to Cite

Procknow, G. (2025). Mapping Out the Monstrosity of Disabled Bodies in Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death (2020) and Nicholas’ Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body (2018). Critical Disability Discourses, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.25071/1918-6215.39773

Issue

Vol. 10 No.1 (2025)

Section

Reviews

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors retain copyright over their work and license their work for publication in Critical Disabilities Discourses under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivaties 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0). This means that the work is available for commercial and non-commercial use and reproduction provided that the original authors are credited and the original publication in this journal is cited, following standard academic practice.