Unseen and Unbelieved: Crip Feminism, Narrative Agency, and Disabled Women in Global Psychological Thrillers

Abstract

This study employs crip feminism, a framework integrating disability justice and feminist theory, to examine how disabled women protagonists in psychological thrillers navigate surveillance, trauma, and credibility across Western and non-Western contexts. Analyzing Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Drowning Girl, Porochista Khakpour’s Sick, Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, I argue that neurodivergent, chronically ill, and mentally distressed characters subvert ableist labels of "unreliability" through fragmented narratives and embodied resistance. By juxtaposing texts from the UK, US, Japan, and Nigeria, this project reveals how race, class, and cultural context intensify scrutiny of disabled women’s voices, while digital platforms (e.g., social media, health apps) introduce new modes of surveillance. Combining close reading, comparative analysis, crip narrative theory (Siebers, Kafer), and digital ethnography of reader responses on Goodreads/BookTok, I demonstrate that these protagonists reclaim agency against medical gaslighting, institutional erasure, and societal dismissal. The research bridges gaps in feminist thriller scholarship—which overlooks disability (Philips, 2021; Cîrlig, 2022)—and disability studies, which neglects popular genres (Davis, 2017). Findings contest linear, ableist storytelling norms and highlight thrillers as sites for decolonizing literary analysis, offering new insights into inclusive narratives, intersectional oppression, and digital-age resistance.