as small as a world and as large as alone

2:17am May 4, 2014

chordatesrock:

youneedacat:

Mel:  #WENEEDMOREDIVERSEBOOKS Because I was stunned into shock at age 14 when I first read a (nonfiction) book where anyone was like me, and I still have never read fiction with a character like me even when a character is, or seems, autistic.  I didn’t even know books could have me in them.

Huh, you mean with the inconsistent verbal skills and catatonic stuff? I was writing something with a character kind of like that and noticed that whereas there’s established… hmm, shorthand? Like the prose equivalent to stylization in cartoons, so things can be described quickly and not get in the way of the story. There’s none of that to draw on. I thought it might exist, since I hadn’t gone looking, and I hadn’t been treating the story it as a serious project. Now that I’ve seen this, I’ll take it seriously and finish it.

It was Nobody Nowhere that I read at age 14.  It’s not just those things, it’s the fact that she was the same sort of autistic person I was, whatever her other faults, and I never saw that, ever, ever.  And still haven’t seen it in fiction, ever, anyone like either of us.

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