literature

the literal life

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I’ve read things literally my whole life. Hold up. Let me rephrase that. Actually, let me point out how that is a perfect opening statement for this piece I’m trying to write about life as a literalist. Everything is wrong with this sentence, if I pick it apart. Not literally everything, though the case could…

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From the Inside Out

A Reading List in the Spirit of Tōjisha-Kenkyū · 当事者研究

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Within Tōjisha-kenkyū lies the potential of rearranging the relationship between the tōjisha (the person with lived experience of the condition being studied) and the specialist — in other words, between experienced knowledge and specialized knowledge. . . . The mutual respect from the tōjisha and the specialist for each other’s knowledge, along with the collaborative…

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‘ey, aye

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all of the reasons to hate ai and to love ai are valid, to a point. it does things for us that are helpful to have done for us. it does things to us that are harmful to have done to us. the main thing we should focus on is what it requires of us.…

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my mother, the maker

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I’m not sure we should even be studying autism in the United States. My mother just turned 82 today. She has faced challenges in every measurable area of her life, that I won’t go into—that’s a different story. Her diagnosis has changed with the trends of the healthcare industry, and she has only recently been…

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adulting and its opposite

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here’s the thing that’s so hard to reconcile as i move into the last third of my life: as much as i appear to my peers to overshare about my inner life, i feel like a tentative teenager when i consider the world i thought i would find myself in as an adult human, growing…

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Godzilla! Save us!

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When a child grows up in an environment where there is only one source of support, and that source of support is unpredictable, unstable, and capable of harm, the child’s identity becomes tied to that of the person they rely on. They may learn that if they go along with their caregiver, their needs will…

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Portrait of a Scientist (early 20th century)

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He was probably a university student, or a post-doc, or maybe already a professor.

He was probably married and probably had a new child at home,

(and might have even had an idea of what university he hoped his child would attend).

He was probably an only child, or if he had siblings, was probably somehow isolated from his siblings–

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