Crosspost: On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis

(I originally wrote this for my reading blog, then realized it would make sense to put it here as well.)

I'm having so many thoughts and feelings while reading this that I decided to write a reaction post as I read, rather than try to do a traditional review.

The story is narrated by Denise, a biracial autistic teen living in Amsterdam. It opens as the earth is just about to be hit by a comet. Denise and her mother are late leaving for their assigned shelter, because they're waiting for Denise's missing sister, Iris.

-- I wonder if the author wrote this partially to address her own fears about how she might survive as an autistic person in a cataclysmic disaster? I know it's something I've thought about a lot myself -- one of the reasons I'm really not attracted to dystopian fiction -- and especially now that I have an autistic son.  When I told my husband the premise, that's immediately where his mind went and he thought the book would be too scary to read.

(One of my favorite stories is John Varley's The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged). You can read it online. In it he writes,

"We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn’t, why would there be so many of them? There’s something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defending one’s family from marauders. Sure, it’s horrible, sure we weep for all those dead people. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive, to start all over.

Secretly, we know we’ll survive. All those other folks will die. That’s what after-the-bomb stories are all about."

Not me. I have never believed that. In my scenario, if I survive, I will undoubtedly die shortly thereafter.)

-- Denise's beloved missing sister is a trans woman. This worries me in a post-apocalyptic story. (It turns out not to be an issue at all.)

-- (32%) I appreciate the nuance of this portrait and it feels really well balanced. Denise is realistically having trouble dealing with stress and melting down, but she's also contributing. She's neither SuperAutistic Girl or Autistic Robot Girl.

--  (37%) "It's the end of the world; I knew I would have to change. "

I pondered this sentence for awhile. It seems an ableist point of view. I guess Denise means she will have to be really brave? To do things that are very hard for her? Does she really think she can just decide to change?

-- (60-something%) This plan is so messed up. Does no one think about what it will be like to spend the rest of your life stuck with people who will utterly hate you?

-- The moral ambiguity in this scenario is excruciating. I hope the story will find some good way to resolve it, but I can't imagine what.

-- Oh. Now I understand what the earlier thought about needing to change was about. It is an ableist point of view, because it's internalized ableism. Denise thinks she has to be more "normal" and useful in order to justify her existence in the post-apocalyptic world.

Ending -- Wow. Just wow. I'm so impressed with how this played out. It's an amazing book. I wish I could read it to my son without scaring him to death. This is why #ownvoices matter.

Finding Neurodiversity in Fiction: The Innocents by Margery Sharp

Content Warning: use of R word

The Innocents, published in 1972, has been one of my favorite books since I was a teenager. The narrator is an elderly woman in a small English village who, because of World War II, sort of accidentally adopts a young girl named Antoinette who is intellectually handicapped. She becomes very fond of Antoinette and finds herself going to extreme measures to protect her.

It is absolutely fascinating to me to examine this book as the person I am now. My first thought was that it holds up surprisingly well to a modern reading because it's very unsentimental about disability. Antoinette is not "inspiring" or sweet or attractive; she loves dead things and poop and has a tendency to throw up when stressed. Her foster mother (I don't think she's ever named, which is interesting) nonetheless loves her just as she is. The more I think about it, the more I realize the book is actually a fabulous blueprint for loving and accepting a neurodiverse person.

Antoniette's foster mother fulfills her needs for quiet and routine, while gently encouraging her to develop without pushing or forcing. She lets her enjoy her solitary pursuits, puts up with Antoinette's love for keeping dead frogs in her pockets (only making sure to wash her hands well before meals), and even plays tiddlywinks with Antoinette's preferred pieces:

"Tiddlywinks, played with rabbit-droppings instead of ivorine counters, is naturally a slow game, in fact not the same game at all, but suited Antoinette all the better, who needed in everything to go slowly."

She finds a way to introduce Antoniette to the company of other children in a non-intimidating way, though horseback riding (something now often used as a therapy for disabled children), and encourages her to speak by reading her interesting sounding words. A perfect example of how she modifies the traditional upbringing of children is that she always recites a bedtime prayer to Antoinette, and is thrilled when the little girl starts chiming in at the "amen" with "vermin," one of her favorite words and a term of affection.

Antoinette, who is almost completely nonverbal, is specifically diagnosed as "simply retarded, not autistic." Having read Neurotribes, (which everyone needs to read!) I understand now how meaningless that diagnosis was, because the definition of autism at the time was extremely limited. If Antoinette were diagnosed today, I think the outcome might be quite different.

Either way, I think Sharp was outlining a wonderful example of how to parent a neurodiverse person with love and acceptance. And to make it more fascinating and still relevant, the danger that Antoinette is faced with, from her returned biological mother, is that of living with someone who refuses to accept her needs and will attempt to force her to conform to societal convention. Without spoilers, this is a danger taken very seriously by the book, the narrator, and by Antoinette herself -- who may not be verbal, but who clearly does have feelings, thoughts, and agency. The story's ending is morally ambiguous but an absolute validation of Antoinette's rights as a human being.

Currently Reading: The Rosie Project

I started reading The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, which has had a lot of positive buzz, but I'm having trouble getting into it because of the "humorless, robotic Aspie" stereotype. It's not that it's never true: I know people on the net who definitely identify that way. The clueless narrator also reminds me of someone I met in real life, who had two autistic children and was desperately searching for a cause/cure, while apparently not noticing that he himself was an Aspie stereotype come to life. I didn't get a chance to discuss it with his wife, but I suspect she laughs and sighs to herself a lot.

I think Don, the narrator of The Rosie Project, is intended to be Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" in a possibly romantically viable way. (He wears shirts with the periodic table on them, despite not seeming at all otherwise like the sort of person who would.) I actually love Sheldon... he's not my son or me, but he has aspects of us or we have aspects of him. We gave son an easel/chalkboard/whiteboard when he was two and he used it for almost ten years, but only the whiteboard section. Sheldon is also believably anxious and prone to meltdowns, two aspects which often get left out of portrayals of Aspies.

Anyway, I don't think Don is necessarily a bad or implausible portrayal, but it's not one that resonates with me and I'm kind of tired of always seeing it. Why does nobody ever write about autistics who love hugging and puns?