Editorial Assistant Bernard Grant: Since I’m autistic, I’m deeply interested in neurodivergent writing. In fact, many of us neurodivergents are multiply neurodivergent. My neurodiversities are a blend of autism, ADHD, dyscalculia (related to learning math), and dyspraxia (related to physical coordination). Other forms of neurodiversity include dyslexia and dysgraphia. People who share neurotypes are called neurokin. Autistic author and advocate Yenn Purkis says of neurokin that connecting with them “is like coming home after being in another country for a long time. My neurokin speak my language.” I agree. And I see in writer and director Madeleine Ryan’s first novel, A Room Called Earth (Penguin, 2020), a kindred neurotype.
Ryan’s novel, which favors digressions, is composed of brief, episodic chapters. The linear though regularly interrupted narrative is of an autistic woman going to a Christmas party, alone, and observing neurotypical behavior while attempting to connect with, and also avoid, various strangers, before she meets a romantic interest.
We spend the first seventeen chapters alone with the unnamed narrator, in her home, her “sacred space,” as she prepares for this party. In an NPR interview Ryan speaks of these opening chapters this way:
“I think that there’s also something to be said for the power of getting ready for an event, and kind of the stories or imaginings you can weave of what’s to come. It’s like this beautiful, sweet spot before the event where you can imagine how amazing it’s going to be. And you’re in this place where you don’t, you know, the reality of it hasn’t kind of confronted you yet. And you can dream it into being and be with yourself and care for yourself—and so hence the seventeen chapters of it.”
Though I refer to my home as my country, the term “sacred space” makes sense to me. I never want to leave my home. And though I have no interests in holidays or parties, I appreciate the autisticness of Ryan’s narrative strategy, which disrupts conventions, mirroring the way her narrator disrupts social norms at the Christmas party.
A Room Called Earth contains many instances of logic associations and analytical editorializing, showing the inner richness of the autistic mind, rooted in logical systems—the way we philosophize, understanding human behavior in ways others can’t, forming unique, logical, theories and making connections between seemingly unrelated topics and subjects; our ability to hyperfocus on our deep interest, our intense attention to detail and patterns, and our never-ending quest for truth and justice. (Though I should note that despite similarities, each autistic brain is specialized, individualized.)
Ryan’s novel features numerous passages that demonstrate these ways of thinking; for example, the narrator struggles to connect with her own species and is more connected to the animal part of herself than her human part, and nothing she ever wants to do seems socially appropriate. In other passages about routinely testing the temperature before going outside and her inability to understand things people have created, I see my thoughts and behaviors reflected clearer than I have in any work of fiction. Ryan’s unnamed narrator sees humans the way I see humans.
One standout passage from A Room Called Earth displays the double empathy problem, a theory proposed by Dr. Damian Milton, an autistic academic researcher who says that autistic people do not lack empathy, as society believes, nor do we have communication or social deficits (whatever that means), but that autistic people communicate and express empathy and other emotions differently than allistic (nonautistic) people because these neurotypes view and experience the world differently. Allistic people, therefore, lack social insight into autistic communication and culture just as autistic people lack social insight into allistic communication and culture. No neurotype is wrong. Autists and neurotypicals live on different wavelengths and think, speak, and behave differently. Our cultures, our lifestyles, are different, as A Room Called Earth makes clear. After a woman at the Christmas party fails to connect with Ryan’s unnamed narrator through empty compliments about the narrator’s kimono, the narrator thinks:
I feel bad for not playing by the rules of the style of conversation that she feels at ease with, and that most people would facilitate for her. She probably perceives herself as being misunderstood and rejected, just like I do. Goddammit. I want to run after her and explain my workings out. Socially, that would seem insane: me, powering across party lines, kimono flying, Madame Butterfly-and-we’re-off-to-the-opera, high heels smashing into the concrete, hand touching her shoulder, face turning, eye contact for the first time, before speaking, and saying something, something powerful, something uniting, something else.
She was so focused on my garments, and on my physique, that she could barely look me squarely in the face. Often when I meet a woman for the first time I want to shout, “I’m up here! I’m up here!” while pointing at my eyes, and smashing at my chest.
A friend once told me that when another woman compliments our clothes or our appearance, it’s not about the clothes or our appearance. It’s about the fact that socially, and culturally, we seem to be standing out, or fitting in. We’re “winning” in terms of what’s expected of us, and we’re being admired for that. Then everyone wants to know how we’re “doing” it and where we “got it.” Which, unfortunately, doesn’t make communicating or connecting any easier. In fact, it makes it impossible.
A slogan of the autistic community is “Nothing About Us Without Us.” The recent Golden Globe nominations of Sia’s film Music, which features a neurotypical actress playing an autistic character, among other insensitivities, is a tragedy that shows how little society cares for what autists have to say about media that pertains to us. A Room Called Earth and other autistic narratives challenge the false pathological stories society tells about our neurotype. Each time an autist speaks honestly about the autistic experiences, society shifts, even if slightly, toward understanding and acceptance of natural cognitive variances: neurodiversity.
For related viewing, check out What people don’t know about autistic women, a short film by Ryan and Hector H. Mackenzie.
Bernard Grant’s writing has appeared most recently in Third Coast and Craft. More here: bernardgrant.com.
