CN: Anti-autistic ableism Genre: Autobiographical poem Golden infinity. A shimmering figure eight in repose. I’m not a puzzle piece. I have endless potential of being. I’m verbal when I’m silent. My fingers speak for me. Tapping away. Sometimes I forget to turn off the closed captions on my face. I can’t remain focused on one …
What a lovely thing it is to wake up to a Facebook chat where my BFF (Talia C. Johnson) is telling Nathan Fréchette (Renaissance) and me that there's an article in NewCityLit zine that mentions Nothing Without Us: Four Disability Anthologies That Are Actually Authentic: A Review of “About Us,” “Firsts,” “Nothing Without Us” and …
I feel my characters in these microcosms are always trying to tell me something about myself. When I was drafting Life in the ’Cosm, I was #DisabledAndAlone, so not in community with other Disabled folks. I was frightened, completely unsure about my future. I had been a runner and worked out regularly. Then fibromyalgia pummeled …
Continue reading Noola schooled me in ’Cosm. Xax did in The Stealth Lovers!
I’m autistic. You don’t know how freeing it is to write that. Every single time I do, I feel like a little more of that burden I’ve been carrying for decades is being lifted off my shoulders. I’m one of those cases (as happens to many autistic cisgender women) where I only discovered this last …
Continue reading Masking: The Fine Art of Faking Being Neurotypical
Cait Gordon—author and editor 