The Power to Reshape the Status Quo in America Lies With Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/books/republic-outsiders



***SNIP


Lynn Stuart Parramore: What made you want to want to write about outsiders at this particular time?

Alissa Quart: I grew up around the edges of the counterculture in New York. My parents’ friends were activists, Marxist historians, things like that. We lived near the East Village. In a way my parents were connoisseurs of outsiders. We’d go to screenings of avant-garde films where the directors would be around. I’d yearn for some normalcy — I wanted pink sneakers and Atari, but instead I got difficult art and foreign films. I was reading esoteric books. I guess you could say I was primed to be a specialized kid, writing poetry from an early age. I was inculcated to become an appreciator of outsider artistic culture, if not political culture.

***SNIP

LSP: How would you say normal is defined at this point in our American history? What does normal look like?

AQ: We’ve seen an exponential rise of diagnoses of mental conditions, and in a way you could say “normal” is people who are not being diagnosed. Normal would also mean buying into branded goods, labels that they’re being given, eagerly going home to eat their steaks.

***SNIP

LSP: Your discussion of autistic individuals who celebrate their differences reminds me of the culture of the deaf, where many do not necessarily wish to be cured. One austistic woman you interviewed was said to “shudder at the idea that money is being poured into a cure instead of being directed toward services for autistic people.” Does that make parents who are searching for ways to cure their autistic children wrong? Would it be better to just let their kids develop without interference?

AQ: My feeling is that many of the people I spoke to in the “neurodiverse” community believe that being autistic can be a benefit to some extent, and some would argue that yes, what we need is services, not cures. They say, look, we’re wired differently. We’re not useless. They would argue that we’re all on a continuum.

[bemildred]

1. KnR nt

[xchrom]

2. mercy buckets. nt

[gopiscrap]

3. yup always has and always will

[hunter]

4. I wore pink sneakers and was crazy about the Atari 800...

That was definitely NOT NORMAL in my community.