Thread by @bogiperson

I want to talk a little bit about autism in fiction because of the latest trashfire.

(Will link in thread)

Specifically, the whole subgenre of "my sibling is autistic, woe is me" MG/YA books by parents of autistic kids,

but the discussion will be a bit wider than that.

So this is the latest trashfire - thank you to @ahomeforthelost for speaking up about it:

https://twitter.com/ahomeforthelost/status/1326268688669011968

Now, this is bad in itself.

But what is even worse is that there are so many books like that, I honestly feel like I can call it a subgenre.

"Sibling of autistic kid comes to terms with having an extremely annoying autistic sibling"

This is terrible and yet SO common.

Now, I have a stake in this as an autistic person...

I am sure *I* annoyed my sibling at times :) but surely this is not my *defining feature*, or HIS defining feature either!

At this point, this is so bad that I CANNOT give my likewise autistic kid a book with an autistic protagonist just like that.

Because chances are good that it will be about how the autistic kid is annoying, and difficult to have as a sibling / family member.

& Ownvoices is rare

Just how pervasive this is:

He used to bring home the Scholastic school catalog from school. Back when school was like. An in-person thing. (Do you remember those times still. They were approximately 864329847329 years ago)

And once it prominently advertised a book...

Sorry, a quick clarification: "he" means our kid, not my brother :) where we grew up, there was no Scholastic book catalog!

The book prominently featured in the catalog was supposed to be a great autism book! With the endorsement of (major, non autism-focused diversity organization)!

Thank G-d I came across the book the next day in the library, so I just picked it up from there instead of buying it..

And thank G-d I actually READ the book before giving it to him.

It was ALLLLLL about how annoying and inconvenient it is to have an autistic child in the family.

So this was possibly one of the most prominent advertising placements for an autism-related book, given to my autistic kid, IN SCHOOL, and it was a book from this very subgenre.

(Endorsed by, I can't even say which organization because it might backfire on me. :( )

Now by contrast - what happens when I, as an autistic person, want to write fiction from an #ownvoices perspective?

I thought "Oh there are so many bad autism stories! Surely it would be easy to sell good autism stories!"

Hahahahahaha lolsob

I wrote a novella where the point of view character is autistic (it's called something else in-universe, but I did mention this in the cover letter)

I shopped it around for.... SIX YEARS before it found a place.

And in those six years I heard the following:

Paraphrasing responses, because this is not for editors to recognize themselves.

"The protagonist is unrelatable"

"The protagonist is hard to relate to"

"This story is unengaging, why does the protagonist think so much about (her autistic special interest)"

"I don't understand the motivation of the protagonist"

"Why does the protagonist spend so much time on (her autistic special interest)"

"It just did not click with me"

"It was missing that spark"

"I am not sure I understood what was going on"

And there were also the editors who were like, this is a great story, but it is not for me as an editor.

If you as an editor don't share an author / protagonist's marginalization, maybe contemplate for a moment before saying this...

Sorry, I broke the threading! I'm trying to repost.

Are there any editors with that marginalization?

More than one editor?

Are they at venues which pay professional rates?

(This is a more general point and not specific to autism)

Now, in the end the novella found a home, and I was paid for it etc. so THIS story had a happy ending.

(Incidentally, at a venue which did not buy stories at this length when I first started shopping stories around. They had to fundraise for that first.)

But.

Then I was like, OK, I could do a BOOK like that.

(Hahaha lolsob)

(Side note: the novella sold to a magazine, so I'm not seeing ongoing royalties from it, it was a one-time payment, though a nice payment!)

Now I am shopping the book around.

I am getting THE EXACT SAME TYPES OF RESPONSES, just from a different set of people.

All over again

And I feel like "Ok, after many many people going on endlessly about disability inclusion in adult SFF magazines, editors in that field possibly got the point"

But that doesn't mean the point, er, propagated more widely?

And part of that is this:

***Often, any kind of disability thread gets reposted only by disabled people.***

And I am not sure what to do about that. At all.

(If you've found some solution related to that, I'd love to hear.)

I also do many different things and interact with many different people, who don't necessarily interact with each other.

I do health sciences stuff! I also write for various ages! (The novella above was adult and the novel YA. But I also have MG stories, nonfiction, etc)

And in some of these circles the discourse is very different from others.

E.g., I had to tell colleagues on campus in no uncertain terms and very aggressively that I do not want to be referred to as a "person with autism" & that is less prevalent in fiction publishing.

To mention siblings again :)

My brother, when he first heard this expression, was extremely confused and said: "Person with autism, is that me? I am with you...?"

(In Hungarian it's even worse bc it is "person living with autism" and we were living together...)

In any case. When there are so many groups of different people, who have really different ideas about this topic, AND retweets don't really spread far and wide most of the time,

it can be really difficult to get even basic messages about inclusion across. :(

I am just so tired sometimes. And when there are intersections, especially when some of those have to do with race and/or ethnicity and/or migration status, it gets even more difficult (and not linearly more difficult, but I'd say even more so)

With autism there are intersections which are especially common, with transness (possibly also with being intersex), and also with migration status!

I don't even know where I'm going besides "this is all so difficult"

I had a thread about that? How whenever there is something terrible about autism, the first impulse of us autistic people is often something that is hard to verbalize.

So it is hard to just whip out a thread

I have just talked about this so much, and it recurs so much, that that gives me some of the talking panels already.

But that in itself is very sad (or infuriating, or both)

In any case. Thank you for listening.

Here is my general-purpose support tweet, because I am reminded I keep on forgetting to put that at the end of threads... but really, just listening to my GRUMBLINGS helps in itself. 🙂

https://twitter.com/bogiperson/status/839852724313284608

Some things that came up in the repllies!

Yes, there are autistic ownvoices books. I reviewed a few of them over the years. I even wrote a cover blurb for at least one :)

I recommended @xasymptote + Autistic Book Party below, so I'll bring it up here:
ada-hoffmann.com/reviews-index/

I have endless book reviews on all sorts of topics - not just this one - on Goodreads and on my website (and because of, uh, executive dysfunction, the two sets often do not overlap 😬)

My website: bogireadstheworld.com
Goodreads: goodreads.com/author/show/64…

I also have a short story collection (The Trans Space Octopus Congregation) and a poetry collection (Algorithmic Shapeshifting), both for adult readers.

I had someone tell me the word "autism" was too infrequently used in my own writing, which was not a decision, just "this is what got published" - which relates to the above systemic processes I discussed.

But to return to the topic, the existence of ownvoices #ActuallyAutistic books does not negate what I said, especially considering:

* How few of them exist compared to non-ownvoices
* How little marketing budget they get
* How often only small publishers pick them up

And this is possibly the most painful reason:

Some of the absolutely best writing that I've read and would recommend from autistic authors, I cannot recommend.

They only exist in manuscript form.

At least two, the authors have given up on trying to get them published.

To preempt: Please do not say to anyone "They should self-publish" without offering both monetary & project management assistance.

It is hard enough for non-autistic authors to do this. It can be *prohibitively difficult* for autistic authors

(Including me, and yes, I've tried)

Look, it is hard enough for me to insert affiliate book store links for my traditionally published books 😬 I am tryingggg:

* Bookshop.org: bookshop.org/lists/books-i-… (this sadly doesn't have Algorithmic Shapeshifting)
* Amazon.com: amzn.to/2GOKypQ

My usual financial transparency disclosure: So far I got $15 via Ko-fi through the thread. Thank you! (You will see this at the ends of various threads)

I will stop here for now (I also need to.... work.... in my actual day job) because I don't want to have one thread about absolutely everything, I will save some further grumblings for later :)