jimhines

April is Autism Awareness month–or perhaps Autism Acceptance Month is the better approach. As it happens, I’m working on a short story with an autistic protagonist. I also have an autistic son, as some of you know. Between the additional posts & discussion, research for the story, and my own ongoing personal efforts to expand my understanding, I’ve been doing a lot of autism-related reading lately.

• Ada Hoffman talks about the problems with “cure stories.” This was both helpful and timely, given a short story I’m currently working on.
• April is Here - Things You Can Do.
• Functioning Labels. I’ve talked about my son as “high functioning.” Reading this piece gave me a lot to think about with regard to such labels and what they really mean.
• The Autistic Tsunami. A Facebook page which collects and links to a number of articles about autism, many (most?) of them written by people with autism.
• Someone Who Moves Like You. “…for the first time in Julia’s life, she looked at a character on television and saw a yes. Abed Nadir walked onto Julia’s laptop screen, and nothing and everything changed.”

Other links:

• Ben Wolverton’s Recovery Fund. Dave Wolverton was one of the instructors at my Writers of the Future workshop. His son was in a longboarding accident, and is now in a coma. The family is uninsured.
• Cosplay =/= Consent.
• Who failed Rehtaeh Parsons? The details of Parsons’ rape and suicide are potentially triggering. Much of her story is also far too common.