Category: A Chorus, Divergent

C. G. Aubrey

In the US this year, we neurodivergent folks have heard a lot about what we cannot do or will never do. Our differences have been increasingly pathologized, demonized, and used to deny us basic respect and decency. Our diagnoses have been dismissed, our personal autonomy, access to medications, and medical care threatened. All because we will never write a poem? That is true for some of us, but poetry is hardly a standard skill set among neurotypicals. It is, after all, uncommon experiences and mindsets that shape creativity. What is poetry, after all, but the manifestation of uncommon wonder?

I began this editorial back in May, when we here at Reckoning first decided to produce this special reprint collection. This was seven drafts ago. Each time I sat down to write, I found myself wanting to avoid vulnerability and to explain . . . well, everything. I wanted to be certain we all understood that neurodivergence is more than ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder; that the face of neurodivergence is neither white nor male nor USAmerican. Neurodivergence is complex and intersectional, and what is considered neurodivergent can vary greatly with cultural norms. I wanted to define terms and provide helpful links. I was drafting a rebuttal to a certain US public official’s list, both scholarly and emotional. Then I realized that I was coming perilously close to defending our existence. 

We should not need this kind of defence (though too often we do). We do, however, need acknowledgement, and we deserve celebration. Neurodivergent folks live with differences and difficulties that shouldn’t be dismissed, but likewise, with determination and daring that cannot be disregarded. We are out here, every day, doing the deep, meaningful work of living.  And there is much work to do. There are voices to find, voices to lift, especially among the most vulnerable of us. There is art to create. There are discoveries to be made, policies to change, and stereotypes to dismantle. We’ll get to all of those, and more, because 

We have been doing, all along, the very things we continue to be told we can’t.

If we must speak in generalities (because this is apparently what we do, /irato/), let us speak instead of neurodivergent curiosity and creativity, of the many artists, writers, and, yes, poets among us. Let us speak our devotion to making sense of life’s chaos, and not ignore the ongoing contributions of neurodivergent scientists and scholars.  Let us speak of our strong sensitivity to injustice, of the many neurodivergent individuals who pursue careers in social work and activism. We should also speak of our determination to connect with others, to understand and to be understood. There are communication deficits among many of us (this is also a cultural malady affecting neurotypicals, but never mind that), and yet we persist. We listen for words unspoken; we acknowledge the silenced. We continue, despite so many obstacles, to find our voices, to speak for ourselves and for those who cannot.

Among the works collected from Reckoning’s first decade, you’ll find these refrains. Short stories like T.K. Rex’s “SQUAWKER AND DOLPHIN SWIMMING TOGETHER” and Taylor Jones’s “Possession” build communication bridges between disparate communities and species. Powerful works like Mari Ness’s poem “Green Leaves Against the Wind” and Ariadne Starling‘s essay “The X That Means Both Death and Hope” remind us that justice is both personal and political, inextricably intertwined. Jacob Coffin beautifully imagines a greener, more tenable, infinitely possible future, repurposed from an unsustainable present. We meet our current uncertainties with actionable hope.

This special neurodivergent reprint collection is for us—to celebrate, to encourage, and to fortify our neurodivergent contributors, readers, and supporters. However, it is shared in hope and gratitude with everyone, wherever you might fit within humanity’s sprawling neurodiversity. If you have found yourself a little lost in reading this editorial, please know that I did, in fact, find a way to over-explain. In the back pages of this issue you’ll find definitions, explanations, and resources.

When I consider the struggles of this present moment, and the voices that seek to drown out those of neurodivergent individuals and communities, I am reminded of nature’s song. Cacophony seems an overused word, and yet it is filled with breath, with the rise and fall of syllables, notes dulcet and discordant. It embraces every cadence of birdcall, every splash and screech, scurry and slither; it holds within it the dissonance of the chase, the flee, the sweet stench of decay, the quiet flights, and the screaming iridescence. There is room for the consonance and dissonance of humanity’s harmony, though many of us would rather not consider ourselves a part of it, and some of us try too hard to decide who gets to sing at all. We forget that the chorus has always been divergent, that the moth’s silence is not unspeaking.

There is poetry in its wings.