Typed Words, Loud Voices


Book Description

Typed Words, Loud Voices is written by a coalition of writers who type to talk and believe it is neither logical nor fair that some people should be expected to prove themselves every time they have something to say.




Loud Hands


Book Description

Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking is a collection of essays written by and for Autistic people. Spanning from the dawn of the Neurodiversity movement to the blog posts of today, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking catalogues the experiences and ethos of the Autistic community and preserves both diverse personal experiences and the community's foundational documents together side by side.




Narrating the Many Autisms


Book Description

Autism is a profoundly contested idea. The focus of this book is not what autism is or what autistic people are, but rather, it grapples with the central question: what does it take for autistic people to participate in a shared world as equals with other people? Drawing from her close reading of a range of texts, by autistic authors, filmmakers, bloggers, and academics, Anna Stenning highlights the creativity and imagination in these accounts and also considers the possibilities that emerge when the unexpected and novel aspects of experience are attended to and afforded their due space. Approaching these narrative accounts in the context of both the Anthropocene and neoliberalism Stenning unpacks and reframes understandings about autism and identity, agency and mattering, across sections exploring autistic intelligibility, autistic sensibility, and community-oriented collaboration and care. By moving away from the non-autistic stories about autism that have, over time, dominated public conception of the autistic experience and relationships, as well as the cognitive and psychoanalytic paradigms that have reduced autism and autistic people to a homogeneous group, the book instead reveals the multiplicity of autistic subjectivities and their subsequent understandings of oppression. It calls on readers to listen to what autistic people have to say about the possibilities of resistance and solidarity against intersecting currents and eddies of power, which endanger all who challenge the neoliberal conception of Life. A stirring and meaningful departure from atomized accounts of neurological difference, Narrating the Many Autisms ponders big questions about its topic and finds clarity and meaning in the sense-making practices of autistic individuals and groups. It will appeal to scholarly readers across the fields of disability studies, cultural studies, critical psychology, sociology, anthropology, and literature. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.




The Girl with the Louding Voice


Book Description

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK! “Brave, fresh . . . unforgettable.”—The New York Times Book Review “A celebration of girls who dare to dream.”—Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers (Oprah’s Book Club pick) Shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and recommended by The New York Times, Marie Claire, Vogue, Essence, PopSugar, Daily Mail, Electric Literature, Red, Stylist, Daily Kos, Library Journal, The Everygirl, and Read It Forward! The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams. Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her path, Adunni never loses sight of her goal of escaping the life of poverty she was born into so that she can build the future she chooses for herself – and help other girls like her do the same. Her spirited determination to find joy and hope in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable will “break your heart and then put it back together again” (Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show) even as Adunni shows us how one courageous young girl can inspire us all to reach for our dreams…and maybe even change the world.




DIY MFA


Book Description

Get the Knowledge Without the College! You are a writer. You dream of sharing your words with the world, and you're willing to put in the hard work to achieve success. You may have even considered earning your MFA, but for whatever reason--tuition costs, the time commitment, or other responsibilities--you've never been able to do it. Or maybe you've been looking for a self-guided approach so you don't have to go back to school. This book is for you. DIY MFA is the do-it-yourself alternative to a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. By combining the three main components of a traditional MFA--writing, reading, and community--it teaches you how to craft compelling stories, engage your readers, and publish your work. Inside you'll learn how to: • Set customized goals for writing and learning. • Generate ideas on demand. • Outline your book from beginning to end. • Breathe life into your characters. • Master point of view, voice, dialogue, and more. • Read with a "writer's eye" to emulate the techniques of others. • Network like a pro, get the most out of writing workshops, and submit your work successfully. Writing belongs to everyone--not only those who earn a degree. With DIY MFA, you can take charge of your writing, produce high-quality work, get published, and build a writing career.




The Spellers Guidebook


Book Description

A means by which thousands, and soon millions, of people are being freed from their lives of silence. The Spellers Guidebook is the first of its kind—a comprehensive guidebook that every family should take along for their Spelling journey. From the moment you first learn about spelled communication through working with a practitioner, developing fluency, and everything in between, this book serves as a blueprint to follow while you build the skills to spell openly with your child. The Spellers Guidebook is informative not only for parents and caregivers but for practitioners and professionals as well. It answers questions from the most basic—what to expect during the first spelling session, to more clinical—what is apraxia, and how does it affect my speller? It even discusses the importance of regulation and how the interpersonal dynamic between the speller and their communication partner can impact flow. The journey toward open communication differs for every family, and this handbook is here to help remove any guesswork. Whether your path seems straight and easy to navigate or the road ahead appears winding and twisting, Dana and DM are here to guide you. If you walk away with nothing more than the confidence that you can do this with your nonspeaker (because you CAN), The Spellers Guidebook has done its job!




Making Sense


Book Description

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Making Sense explores the experiential, ethical, and intellectual stakes of living in, and thinking with, worlds wherein language cannot be taken for granted. In Nepal, many deaf signers use Nepali Sign Language (NSL), a young, conventional signed language. The majority of deaf Nepalis, however, use what NSL signers call natural sign. Natural sign involves conventional and improvisatory signs, many of which recruit semiotic relations immanent in the social and material world. These features make conversation in natural sign both possible and precarious. Sense-making in natural sign depends on signers' skillful use of resources and on addressees' willingness to engage. Natural sign reveals the labor of sense-making that in more conventional language is carried by shared grammar. Ultimately, this highly original book shows that emergent language is an ethical endeavor, challenging readers to consider what it means, and what it takes, to understand and to be understood.




Communication Alternatives in Autism


Book Description

Ten autistic self-advocates share their experiences with alternative forms of communication such as rapid prompting method (RPM) and facilitated communication (FC), both highly controversial. Their narratives document the complexities that autistic individuals navigate--in both educational and community settings--when choosing to use approaches that utilize letter boards and keyboards. While the controversies remain--RPM requires further scientific study, and FC is subject to criticism about confirmation bias--these individuals share powerful stories in the context of aiming for disability rights. The book concludes with a chapter about best practices for educators, particularly for schools and colleges that have students who use these communication methods.




Speaking for Ourselves


Book Description

Since the advent of autism as a diagnosed condition in the 1940s, the importance of music in the lives of autistic people has been widely observed and studied. Articles on musical savants, extraordinary feats of musical memory, unusually high rates of absolute or "perfect" pitch, and the effectiveness of music-based therapies abound in the autism literature. Meanwhile, music scholars and historians have posited autism-centered explanatory models to account for the unique musical artistry of everyone from Béla Bartók and Glenn Gould to "Blind Tom" Wiggins. Given the great deal of attention paid to music and autism, it is surprising to discover that autistic people have rarely been asked to account for how they themselves make and experience music or why it matters to them that they do. In Speaking for Ourselves, renowned ethnomusicologist Michael Bakan does just that, engaging in deep conversations--some spanning the course of years--with ten fascinating and very different individuals who share two basic things in common: an autism spectrum diagnosis and a life in which music plays a central part. These conversations offer profound insights into the intricacies and intersections of music, autism, neurodiversity, and life in general, not from an autistic point of view, but rather from many different autistic points of view. They invite readers to partake of a rich tapestry of words, ideas, images, and musical sounds that speak to both the diversity of autistic experience and the common humanity we all share.




Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement


Book Description

This open access book marks the first historical overview of the autism rights branch of the neurodiversity movement, describing the activities and rationales of key leaders in their own words since it organized into a unique community in 1992. Sandwiched by editorial chapters that include critical analysis, the book contains 19 chapters by 21 authors about the forming of the autistic community and neurodiversity movement, progress in their influence on the broader autism community and field, and their possible threshold of the advocacy establishment. The actions covered are legendary in the autistic community, including manifestos such as “Don’t Mourn for Us”, mailing lists, websites or webpages, conferences, issue campaigns, academic project and journal, a book, and advisory roles. These actions have shifted the landscape toward viewing autism in social terms of human rights and identity to accept, rather than as a medical collection of deficits and symptoms to cure.