In honor of AAPI Heritage Month, here are some Asian autistic people you should know about!
Lydia X.Z. Brown is a Chinese-American adoptee. They are heavily involved in disability justice work, and their writing on disability is foundational to the movement.
Yuh-Line Niou is a Taiwanese-American politician who serves in the New York State Assembly.
She represents the 65th district, which includes Chinatown. She originally ran as a member of the Working Families Party, but she is currently in office as a Democrat.
Kodi Lee is a Korean-American musician and singer with perfect pitch, who recently won America’s Got Talent.
He is also blind (due to optic nerve hypoplasia) and has Addison’s Disease, which affects hormone production in the adrenal glands.
Niam Jain is a South Asian painter and visual artist from Canada, whose paintings are vibrant and abstract.
His speech is limited, so painting is an important form of self-expression for him.
Hikari Ōe is a Japanese composer of classical music. He is the son of Kenzaburō Ōe, a Nobel Prize winning author.
He is visually impaired and epileptic, and has limited speech. He uses musical compositions to help express himself.
Helen Hoang is a Vietnamese-American romance novelist, and autistic parent to an autistic daughter.
Her first novel, The Kiss Quotient, is about an autistic woman exploring her sexuality and figuring out romance.
Naoki Higashida is a Japanese author and visual artist who types to communicate.
His most famous book, The Reason I Jump, was recently turned into an award-winning documentary film.
Amrit Khurana is an Indian visual artist whose life and work was featured in the documentary version of The Reason I Jump.
Her speech is limited, and she uses art as an outlet to express her thoughts and experiences.
Raj Singh Tattal is a Punjabi Sikh visual artist from the UK who is most well-known for drawing detailed portraits.
He had not drawn for over a decade until he was diagnosed as autistic, which led him to decide to channel his ability to focus for hours on end into creating art.
Last but not least, Ping Lian Yeak is a Malaysian-Australian visual artist with limited speech.
He has been featured in several documentaries, and his artwork was displayed at the United Nations headquarters in 2008 in honor of Autism Awareness & Acceptance Month.
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I’m doing a linguistic ethnography for my final paper in one of my classes this semester.
I’m going to be comparing autistic people’s speech when they’re talking to other autistic people, versus when they are talking to non-autistic people.
In order to accomplish this, I need autistic people who are 18 or older to email me recordings.
You should to collect two different recordings:
One of a conversation with another autistic person(s), and one with a non-autistic person(s).
You can stop each recording after 5 minutes. The recordings don’t need to be about any specific topic, and you don’t need to censor yourself (cursing is fine, etc.)
These should be natural conversations where you talk to the other person/people the way you normally would.
Something is happening that you need to know about.
The Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts is still using painful electric shock devices to punish autistic & disabled people.
The devices were banned by the FDA last year, but then the ban was put on hold because of Covid.
The JRC practices a form of behaviorism called Applied Behavioral Analysis.
Electric shocks, solitary confinement, physical restraint, starvation, sleep deprivation, etc. are all tactics used by the JRC to “control” the behavior of developmentally disabled people.
Six disabled people have died at the JRC in the time since it was founded.
Residents have been restrained and shocked for things as minor as not taking off their jacket, accidentally wetting the bed, and rocking back and forth.
My longest-lasting friendships/relationships have been with people who communicate bluntly with me.
Autistic people’s communication style is often straightforward, and we can find it hard to maintain relationships with people who don’t return the favor of being an open book.
Dancing around feelings, dropping hints, avoiding conflict, keeping secrets, etc. are a recipe for disaster when trying to communicate with me.
Because I will keep asking about things and expecting a straight answer.
I can’t function without knowing exactly what’s going on.
Sometimes it can be hard for people to talk about certain feelings, etc. But just letting me know the basics saves everyone a lot of stress.
I think a lot of neurotypical people feel too vulnerable and exposed by that kind of bluntness.
Yesterday I remembered that when I was around 6-7 years old, I learned how to make origami foxes in my art class at school.
Then, when I got home, I cut up a bunch of pieces of paper into squares, and then proceeded to make what ended up as over 200 foxes in just a few days.
They were all different sizes, but a substantial portion of them were smaller than a thumbtack.
I was meticulous, and the repetition of folding in the same pattern constantly didn’t bore me, it made me excited and happy.
I was so proud of how many there were.
That weekend, I scooped all of the foxes up and put them in a giant ziplock bag, then took them to church so I could give some away to people.
The congregants were astonished at my “patience” and “attention to detail.”
Looking back, this is such a classic autistic story.
Next For Autism and their partner organization, the Center For Autism and the Developing Brain (CFADB), are currently engaged in a gaslighting campaign against the autistic community.
Both organizations have changed & erased things from their websites, without acknowledging it.
First, NEXT added “Statement of Purpose” and “FAQ” tabs to their About section.
I was surprised to see that they didn’t have an FAQ section at all before they faced backlash for their association with CFADB and promotion of ABA therapy.
In the FAQ section (created as a PR front to deflect backlash, but never named as such) they say “[NEXT] provides no funding or support for research into the cause or cure of autism.”
At the time they wrote that, CFADB still had “causes, treatment, and prevention” on their site.