Suchitra Chatterjee

I am a disabled writer/artist, historian who once upon a time believed in justice and the legal system..

I now no longer believe in justice or the legal system but fortunately I am not alone in this so that's OK.

I have had to accept the reality of institutional racism that once upon a time I proudly fought against, now I just let them get on with it, they aren't going to change, and justice, despite after 20 years of fighting it, does have a colour and it's not Black or Brown. Joy Gardner, Charles De Menzes, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and the likes of Daunte Wright and many more can attest to that.

So what now with so many years of my life wasted in the futility of trying to bring about the demise of racism by working within the legal system? I am writing/drawing and pursuing volunteer work in the museum sector where I have found a kind of jaded peace in which I can be myself. A biracial woman who was to come to terms with 20 wasted years of her life...

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

And that light is in the guise of Zombies...

Twice Dead - Contagion is the first in a trilogy was born out of conversations I had with fellow disabled people about books and how WE are represented in them. Especially in the horror/fantasy/sci-fi genre.

"We are never the heroes," one friend said. "We get eaten first" another friend said of the Zombie Genre.

"Why can't disabled people be heroes in books?" was another comment.

The actress Sarah Gordy, of Upstairs Downstairs, Call the Midwife, and Culture Device Dance Project is one of those friends who talked candidly with me about disability and the arts. She told me her greatest wish was to have a part in Doctor Who, to be the first person with Down's Syndrome to do so. But this wouldn't happen she said, until there was more books, plays, and such like out in the public domain.

So Twice Dead - Contagion is a book about a Zombie Apocalypse where disabled people make their own stand and become the heroes we are denied in real life...unless we just happen to be a Paralympian (who I think are amazing) but not everyone is a Paralympian, some of us are spectators but that does not make us any less of a person.

Respect.