V O L U M E 2. I S S U E 1
ABOUT THE JOURNAL
PYSSUM Literaria: A Creative Arts Journal is an inspiration drawn from PYSSUM, an organization dedicated to supporting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities since 2005. Published bi-annually in January and July, this international literary journal stands at the intersection of creative expression, disability narratives, and inclusive storytelling. We celebrate diverse voices from across the globe—both emerging and established writers, poets, and artists who challenge conventional perspectives and enrich our understanding of human experience. PYSSUM Literaria serves as a platform where literary excellence meets meaningful advocacy, offering space for stories that might otherwise go unheard. Each issue features poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, book reviews, photography, and visual arts that explore themed content around disability and inclusion. We believe the written word and visual expression possess transformative power—to transcend boundaries, ignite inspiration, provoke reflection, and forge connections across communities. PYSSUM Literaria is more than a journal; it is a literary sanctuary where art, advocacy, and human diversity converge. Here, we don't simply publish work about disability—we create space for authentic voices to reshape narratives, challenge assumptions, and celebrate the full spectrum of creative expression.
From the Chief Editor's Desk
Dear Reader,
I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our contributors and well-wishers who embraced the previous issue of PYSSUM Literaria with much warmth and encouragement. Your engagement continues to inspire our journey as we strive to create a meaningful space for creative expression, dialogue, and reflection through literature and the arts.
We are grateful to each of our contributors who responded to our theme ‘Fractured Identities.’ In a world shaped by shifting histories, personal struggles, and evolving social realities, identities often emerge as layered, contested, and beautifully complex. Through this issue, we attempt to hold space for these fragments, including voices that question belonging, narratives that confront displacement, and expressions that seek wholeness within rupture.
The collection brings together poetry and fiction that traverse memory, marginality, resilience, and self-reclamation. The works gathered here do not merely portray fragmentation; they illuminate the possibilities of re-imagining the self beyond imposed boundaries. Alongside these creative pieces, we continue our effort to foster thoughtful engagement through conversations and reflections that deepen our understanding of identity in its many forms.
We warmly invite you to immerse yourself in this journey of PYSSUM literaria and share in the conversations it hopes to spark. Your reflections, responses, and continued support nurture this evolving literary endeavour, and we look forward to hearing from you through our various platforms. With gratitude for your companionship on this journey, we present this fresh assemblage of voices for you to explore.
A special thanks to editor Elizabeth Neuville for sharing her thoughts with us. Thank you to Jyotirmoy Joshi and Vedamini Vikram for curating this issue with meticulous attention and care. Dear reader, thank you for your time and patience.
Ranu Uniyal
Chief Editor
PYSSUM Literaria
February, 2026
On Identity, Wholeness, and Brokenness
Who am I?
This is a fundamental question that we wrestle with throughout our lives. Across history, theologians, philosophers, poets, scientists, and songwriters have offered pathways toward understanding, each illuminating a facet of this enduring inquiry. Human uniqueness has been explained through genetics and divine spark, through mathematical probability and cosmology, through evolutionary biology and the Big Bang Theory, and through every major spiritual tradition known to us. Each framework attempts, in its own language, to name what makes us us.
Our answers to this question are shaped by countless influences: those who matter to us, the models and cultural heroes we encounter, the expectations held for us, the myths and traditions we inherit, and the experiences—both gentle and violent—that mark our lives. Identity is not formed in isolation; it is shaped through relationship, reflection, and resistance. And yet, many sense that beneath all of this shaping—beneath history, circumstance, and interpretation—there exists something essential and inviolate. At the core of each of us, there is what the Sufi poet Rumi described so beautifully as a tiny clear bead. For many, this “clear bead” is understood as the part of us that knew us before we were born; that transcends experience; that remains untouched by injury, loss, alteration, or fracture. It is the seat of wholeness that endures even when life has been unkind—when bodies fail, minds change, or circumstances constrict. It is the self beneath the roles we are assigned and the stories told about us.
People with disabilities—and others whose vulnerabilities are assigned, amplified, or even created by human systems—are especially likely to have their identities shaped not by their own becoming, but by expectation, myth, and imposed limitation. Society has too often cast such individuals into narrow roles:
Forever the innocent child, never permitted to grow. Destined to perform for others—clowns for collective comfort, inviting both laughter and a quiet tear. The black sheep of the family, rather than a beloved son or daughter. The mark of familial shame, rather than a source of family pride. Genetic waste, rather than cherished citizen. The object of inspiration, rather than the subject of a life.
These narratives, among others, do real harm. They strip away imagined futures, constrict the full flowering of human possibility, and fracture the internal coherence of self-image. When imposed long enough, they can obscure access to the clear bead itself—not because it is damaged, but because it has been hidden beneath layers of misrecognition.
Fractured Identities, the theme of this volume of Pyssum’s Literaria, invites us into a deeper exploration of identity, human wholeness, and the expression of selfhood in the face of such fractures. It asks us to look closely—at ourselves, at one another, and at the stories we tell—and to question what has truly been broken by circumstance, and what, perhaps, has never been broken at all.
Dear reader, welcome to this dialogue. Together, may we move toward a richer understanding of the clear bead at our center—and of one another.
In pursuit of the clear bead alongside you,
Elizabeth Neuville, editor, PYSSUM literaria.
January 2026
Elizabeth P. Neuville Executive Director Keystone Institute +1 7174437884 +91 8130295983
