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9:18pm September 15, 2014

No Missing Pieces #1 may be missing some people.

feralismyheart:

(This is probably going to be the foreword in No Missing Pieces #1.)

I’ve been working for a year on the first issue of a collaborative zine (short for “magazine”) by autistic people called No Missing Pieces, which will be online and on paper very soon. When I started on this project, I tried to cast a wide net for contributors because my hope was that lots of different autistic people would send stuff in, particularly autistic folks who are even more kept at the margins of societies and probably often overlooked within Autistic communities as well. In a lot of ways, that’s happened: girls & women, people of color, non-binary folks, binary & non-binary trans folks, queer people, people with additional disabilities, and folks of various ages from different parts of the world have submitted work. Everyone who sent something in has at least one thing in the zine because I didn’t have to turn anything away due to contents, and I didn’t edit the contents.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot with this first issue though is that I don’t currently know if any non-speaking people are contributors, or if people who need a lot of help with daily life things have contributed, because I didn’t ask since it’s none of my business. I’m sure there are many other autistic experiences and identities that are lacking in or absent from the zine as well — and I know one magazine is not going to represent everyone — but those are two that I am particularly thinking about because I think they probably make up large portions of the Autistic community. Also, autistic people who can usually speak with their mouthparts in ways that non-autistic people can typically understand and who may generally get read as non-autistic by non-autistic people sometimes take up a lot of space in the Autistic community, and I was thinking about that while working on this project.

I accepted submissions that were sent in to me by (or not long after) the deadline(s) (the last one was in July), but something I didn’t do enough of is reach out directly to people whose work I’d seen and liked to ask if I could feature their work because my anxiety kept getting in my way — especially if they’re pretty well-known in the Autistic community, but also just random strangers. Another thing is I think maybe I didn’t stress enough in the call for submissions how important it is to me to showcase people who are marginalized within the Autistic community as much as outside of it. I’m still pretty new to the Autistic community, and this is my first time doing this sort of collaborative community project, so I got overwhelmed and may have “dropped the ball”. I’m really sad that I can’t find the URL for a video I saw a year or so ago that taught me a lot about disability history / the disability rights movement, the history of the neurodiversity movement, and the history of Autistic communities in some parts of the world, which was edited, directed, subtitled & voiced-over by a young non-speaking autistic guy and was super well-done because that would have been awesome to include. There’s a lot of other stuff that I would have liked to include as well though.

Like I said, I really have no idea whether or not non-speaking autistic people or autistic folks who need a lot of help with daily things or other auties who seem to be marginalized within the community have contributed, but I’m writing this to say I hope that they have — or that they will in future issues, assuming this first issue goes well. I just wanted to talk about this because I know how important representation is. I am learning as I go, and I will work to do better next time. All autistic people (among many others - but this is a project by autistic people) are important, whole human beings (hence why people chose the title “No Missing Pieces” - thanks to @jupiter-reborn for the title!!!) who should be valued, supported, accepted and listened to just as we are, and that’s why I started this project.

Thank you for reading.

— Jordan, editor of No Missing Pieces

I am nonverbal (though I haven’t always been) and need a lot of help getting through the day.  I wanted to contribute but completely forgot about it because a family crisis intervened and has completely knocked my life off the rails.  Is there any way I can contribute still?