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courtneyfalling's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
3.0
I have... mixed feelings about this graphic memoir. Parts really resonated with me, including how deeply Leola absorbed her own parents' stories into her understanding of her own shadow and her fundamental isolation around classmates. But I picked this book up because I felt very similarly when I was younger, as an unidentified autistic kid constantly fearful of my parents' control, and the few moments when this book actively approaches considering autistic identity are bad. I don't like the fallback onto terms like "mild autism" or "Asperger's" and there's no recognition whatsoever of autistic community, politics, or history. I remember watching as a kindergartener when one of the boys in my class would crawl under desks during recess and pretend to be a cat, then sitting with the betrayal and horror when he was assigned to special ed, like at any point I could be next if I didn't mask well enough, all the time. So when Leola has a very similar experience of pretending to be a dog, but she's not forced into special education or other anti-disability discriminatory structures, it doesn't feel like it's because she has "mild autism" (compared to whatever "worse" form might actually deserve that treatment, in her functional label hierarchy). It feels like she existed in a school district and time period in which her whiteness, class status, and shy girlhood interacted with surrounding social forces to keep her from capture. (Also, I read an interview afterward with Liana Finck about this book, and she talks about reading a few specific books to learn about autism. All four of the authors she mentions are white, and only two actually have autism themselves, both of them late-identified in adulthood. All of them focus on 'Savant Syndrome' and I could use almost any of their work as a prime example of aspie superiority and what's wrong with it. I can't say I'm surprised given this memoir's arc but I'm still so frustrated.) But because the memoir only really considers Leola's story through some innate darkness within her and her family, and not how that extends into the world around her or how the injustices of the world extend back into her experiences, it just ends up pathologizing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying
Moderate: Domestic abuse
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