This study is to investigate the treatment of deformity in the novels Handle with care by Jodi Picoult and Staying Fat for Sara Byrnes by Chris Crutcher. Handle with Care deals with the theme of a congenital disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) and the problems a family is involved with by raising a kid named Willow with this defect. The disease has eight basic types with prenatal symptoms. Type III of OI that the protagonist is entangled with, is marked by lack of cologen formation that leads to a brittle bone with numerous breaks and fractures in the bones of the patient. Staying fat for Sara Byrnes deals with bullies, unlikely heroes, friendship, fear and coping with adversity. Two protagonists of the novel, Eric Calhoune and Sara Byrnes, are social outcasts due to excessive fatness and scars from childhood that develop a bond of friendship between the two protagonists. Medical humanities as an interdisciplinary field investigates the social, historical and cultural dimensions of medicine. It is interesting to note how authors ʻuseʼ disability to tell their stories. Deformity is understood in aesthetic terms as the opposite of beauty or a deviation from normal appearance. According to Foucault, since classical time, body is seen as object and target of power and there is a changing view to deformity from the time when a person with deformity was exhibited as a sheer freak show to the time doctors thought of healing strategies for deformity. While the stigma of deformity derives from the appearance of bodies, modern definitions of disability concern the functions of bodies and their relationship to their social and physical environment. The protagonists’ names in both novels indicate how metaphorically deformity can be viewed.
