The two books are acquired, reviews coming soon

Images: Kit holding up Typed Words, Loud Voices, ed. Elizabeth Grace and Amy Sequenzia; and The Obsessive Joy of Autism, by Julia Bascom.

things i need to read

need to order Typed Words, Loud Voices... ed. Amy Sequenzia and Elizabeth J. Grace

and the Obsessive Joy of Autism by Julia Bascom.

I will order them soon.

moons in my fingers

There are moons in my fingers and

frosted glinted shattered crushed to dust (stardust)

at my feet.

you laugh and

stop and jolt n go conversations

about the solar system moon miranda which

swallowed itself like i feel i've

swallowed my tongue.

a fractured flying globe of a moon

that put itself back together –

i haven't yet, you would fault me for it.

our conversations hit like

the cosmic collision that flipped miranda's

planet with gravity upturned and farflung

sideways orbits.

and there are moons in my fingers, crescents in my arms.

with the fragile pines (poem)

i shake with the fragile pines 
and crouch on mounds of pine straw 
before rattling brick paths.

– but like esther greenwood
i am, i am, i am
because i shake with the 
emotions of being human
words sanded in my throat
coughed through the glass
roof of my mouth just
rounded enough by tumbling rain water
down the brick paths to 
not shatter me –

and i shake with the fragile pines
and the falling swirling green needles 
that bend, not break.

410 Directed Reading of Psychiatric & I/DD History Reflections: Kanner

*I am reading books and articles for a directed reading on the history of psychiatric, intellectual and developmental disabilities for my final semester of college.

As it turns out, I do not regret the life choice of reading Kanner so far, disturbing though the descriptions are. It's important to know this history.

Not that I agree with all the gross painting of autistic people as empty shells and tragedies. But I was reading these chapters and these kids' parents seemed autistic too. They just were ~people~ in society instead of ~unpeople~ and the expectations that only certain people could be autistic prevented them from being labeled as such. 

Kanner literally wrote at one point "One is tempted to think of them as successfully autistic adults, in the sense that they do a creditable job in their chosen occupations and quite a few have attained sufficient recognition to be listed in some of the Who's Who compliations" (Kanner, essay from 1954 republished in Childhood Psychosis: Initial Studies and New Insights in 1973, pg 74). 

It's a common theme that persists today, to be honest. Anyone who is considered successful by society's standards gets told they can't be autistic, that their professional or self diagnosis is wrong. 

(In my book, you don't have to be considered traditionally successful or independent to be worth advocating for, with, and to be respected and valued with human dignity). But people need to stop having such rigid definitions. and accept that like all people, autistic people are different from each other.

The blogger with their books

Have a picture:

[image is Kit balancing one book and holding two: Exile and Pride by Eli Clare, On Our Own by Judi Chamberlin, and Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking]

Exile and Pride pt. 3

This is the last one ascribed to a specific subsection, "Mountain." The posts will be fewer and describing more of her poetic aspects of it, unless I feel something warrants a post.

III. Home

The body is a home. She will never find home on the mountain. Disabled people will not find home on that mountain, that mountain that is booby-trapped into never reaching what people say they want us to reach. We have multiple mountains and none are homes.

She calls her body disabled, violated, white, queer, and describes them all as home.

The body is a home, but only if “understood that bodies are never singular” – we are shaped by people and our reactions and we “need the bodies of trees” – the trees that gave her refuge – queer bodies and disabled bodies – she could not live without them (Clare, 9). And we can't live without each other. We are disabled and we need each other.

The body is a home, only if it is “understood that place and community and culture burrow deep into our bones.” (Clare, 10). We are shaped by culture and community and we need culture and community. We need a disabled culture. Our bodies and minds are different, and we have a culture.

The body as home, only if it is understood that “language too lives under the skin” and can “mark between self-hatred and pride.” (Clare, 11) We can be called these things, we can be insulted for disability and queerness and what have you, but we can reclaim. We can call ourselves these things with pride, take it back.

The body as home, only if it is understood that it “can be stolen, fed lies and poison.” (Clare, 12) We can be told that we will not amount to anything, that our lives are not worth living, that we cannot live with our own sense of dignity and must ascribe to others' concept of our dignity.

The body as home, if it is understood that it can be stolen, but “reclaimed.” (Clare, 12) We can. We can reclaim.