Abstract
This article investigates neuromixed love stories in novels that include a named autistic character, are written by autistic authors, or have characters who have been named by paratexts as autistic. In the article, we invoke a collective autoethnographic literary approach, using our reading diaries or letters to each other as source material. From an autistic perspective we explore neurotypical heterosexual neuromixed love stories and autistic counter love stories focusing on how neurotypical and autistic characters are represented. Our main findings are two dichotomies and two happy endings. In neurotypical heterosexual neuromixed love stories, the dichotomy of a female autistic grotesque and the male neurotypical savior is central where the happy ending is curing or masking autism, upholding both heteronormativity and neuronormativity. In autistic counter love stories, the happy ending is rather framed as unmasking and founding a way of life outside of neuro- and heteronormativity for both parties.
Community Brief
Why is this topic important
Autistic people are often told that they can’t communicate their experiences to non-autistic people. A way to counter this assumption is to show that autistic experiences can be communicated from autistic perspectives.
What is the purpose of this article?
This article looks at love stories between an autistic character and a non-autistic character in novels. The novels include a named autistic character, are written by autistic authors, or have characters with autistic characteristics. It looks at the stories using a collective autoethnographic literary approach. This means the article’s autistic authors wrote reading diaries or letters to each other and then analyzed their own writings.
What do the authors suggest?
The authors found that the love stories focused on straight, neurotypical relationships as being normal, even when the story’s author was autistic. Female autistic characters acted similar to nonhuman/non-woman monsters. They did not seem to be able to experience normal feelings. Male neurotypical characters acted like “saviors,” who are able to “cure” the female autists, normalizing demands of masking.
What do the authors think should happen in the future?
The authors think that autistic people need to be represented in different ways in literature. They also think that these autistic characters need to express happy endings and make unmasking a path for autistic happiness.
How will this study help autistic people now and in the future?
It is important for both autistic and non-autistic readers to be aware of how autistic people are represented in literature. This study brings awareness of a gap in how autistic people are represented in romance stories, which might encourage writers to communicate more nuanced autistic experiences.
Background
As autistic people, we are commonly told by neurotypicals that our experiences are outside of the range of what is tellable, 1 or in need of neurotypical translation to be intelligible. Through neurotypical assessment and diagnosing, we become autistic bodies authored by neurotypicals 2 (p. 1). A way to counter this assumption is to stress the importance of forming theories “drawn at least, in part, from internal observations.” 3 In this article, we explore the possibilities of a collective autoethnographic literary approach to autism fiction and to autistic theorizing drawn from internal observations, our own autistic bodyminds.
Hacking defines autism fiction as fiction “in which autism plays a key role” 4 in the narrative’s plot, shaping character identities and affecting the outcome of events. In this article, we use a broader definition, including both named and unnamed representations of autism. In contrast to “named” representations of autism, 5 and where “autism” is a central part of the plot, Mullis 6 refers to “autistic coding”—where characters have been “coded” by collective autistic fanbases as autistic, even though they are not explicitly named as autistic. We refer to “unnamed” representations of autism as either coded as autistic in paratexts or by collective autistic fanbases.
For several years we have been reading a diverse range of autism fiction, both on our own and together. Some of the fiction has been impossible to relate to as autistic readers. Some of the fiction we have encountered can be referred to as textual violence, as violent narratives of autism; something that does not feel good and does not want autistic people well. 7 From these experiences we have been looking for reading strategies, ways of reading autism fiction. As we both are acquainted with queer and feminist approaches in literary criticism, it is mainly here we have found those alternative reading strategies. In the context of lesbian literary criticism, Allen has suggested micro-readings as strategic readings; the “micro-read only the narratives within each text that engage affective exchanges between women as lovers” 8 (p. 17). Following this suggestion, we think of micro-readings as ways to explore and enjoy autistic pleasures, among them pleasures of small details in a text. Micro-readings can also work as shelters against textual violence, such as hurtful autism narratives. For example, a focus on the pleasures of small details in a text allows us to ignore (strategically misinterpret) the “whole story,” which might be a violent one. This is in line with what Kosofsky Sedgwick 9 has referred to as a paranoid and reparative reading practice. This double reading practice acknowledges the violence in the whole story, as part of a paranoid reading practice, where the reader needs to be smarter than the text, aiming at unveiling the text and making visible the structures underneath. At the same time, a reparative reading practice may question the paranoia, refusing to read the text as a tool for brainwashing. Instead, taking pleasure in the details, focusing on parts of the text that feel good, which may “wish you well,” is to read reparatively.
In the following analyses, we focus on both our uncomfortable and comfortable reader experiences related to happy endings in romance autism fiction. We explore narratives of neurotypical curing, where an autistic character is cured by neurotypical characters through masking and stories of autistic love pictured as stories of failure. However, we also explore counternarratives, such as narratives of alternative storying of autistic love.
Literary masking and unmasking
The presumed lack of tellability and the assumptions of the importance of neurotypical translations of autistic experiences can be connected to theorizing about masking. Camouflaging or masking is a social phenomenon utilized by both autistic and non-autistic people—consciously or unconsciously—in everyday social interactions10,11: “an unsurprising response to the deficit narrative and accompanying stigma that has developed around autism” 11 (p. 52). Autistic people often use camouflaging strategies to hide their characteristics or to seem non-autistic in different social interactions to adapt to neurotypical norms on social communication, and to be valued by others. However, these strategies have personal costs such as fatigue, anxiety, difficulties in relationships, 3 burnout, suicidality, mental health issues, and late or missed diagnosis. 11
The article is based on a collective reading of autism fiction and writing together as an autistic collective. The collective consists of the authors and a third participant (a scholar in literary criticism). The whole group contributed with readings, reflections, and early drafts of the article. After these initial stages, the two authors together wrote the article based on our initial writings in the group. Part of the process of working together has been to seek ways of unmasking and relearning our autistic ways of reading and writing. This includes developing our ways of writing and reading, what we refer to as moving in a textual space autistically, and acknowledging, code, and characters who are “moving like us.” 6 The Collins dictionary defines “autistically,” as “in an autistic manner or the manner of a person who has autism.” For us, this includes allowing the textual movements to be nonlinear and asynchronous: disrupted, into singular bits and thoughts, and moving in the textual space in different directions, at different times. We read with our autism. By this we mean we read following our monotropic interests—including hyperfocused, intense attention to details, readings “charged with feeling,” 12 in language and fictional characters. As we read, we acknowledge the impact of “the looping effect” in our readings. By the “looping effect,” Ian Hacking 13 refers to the feedback loop between textual representation and cultural attitudes/discourses. We aim, however, to form new “loops,” which may take shape outside of what McDermott 14 has referred to as the neurotypical gaze. We argue that ideas of fiction (such as ideas of what is good or comprehensible) and how to read fiction are dominated by what McDermott 14 has referred to as “the norms and conventions of neurotypicality”; or what we refer to as neurotypical authoring. Neurotypical authoring has an impact on autistic fiction authors’ ways of writing as well as autistic readers’ ways of reading. Our discourses of autism and experiences of moving “autistically” are coming from different contexts and fit into a diverse range of broader frameworks of autism fiction. Taking the idea of autism as a moving target 13 literary, we want to suggest a movement; from literary masking to literary unmasking. Literary masking includes the practices of an autistic author othering oneself and similar others (including one’s autistic literary characters) aiming at speaking to a foremost generalized neurotypical readership. Literary unmasking includes the practices of an autistic author identifying with and recognizing oneself and similar others (including one’s autistic literary characters), aiming at speaking to a neurodiverse readership.
The data consist of our reading diaries as well as letter writing to each other, in which we have collectively explored our experiences as autistic readers of autism fiction. We write in line with what feminist researchers Francis and Hey 15 have referred to as “joint action.” Throughout, we mingle our autoethnographic reader accounts (referring to “one of us”) and writing to each other (referring to “extracts from our writing to each other”), in relation to citations from romance autism fiction, research accounts, and theories, as a way of illustrating the work with the text as thinking about autism fiction with each other.
Within this article, we try to formulate a kind of analysis that combines an autoethnographic 16 and autotheoretic 17 practice with a reading method that is becoming more and more common within feminist literary studies. 18 The autoethnographic method combines the academic perspective with the personal experience and an artistic approach 19 where the emotions of the academic/writer are taken seriously as both something worth studying and a method of doing this study. 20 A collective autoethnographic method, as used here, is doing theory collectively, in a combination of artistic and academic writing. 16 This collective autoethnography has been described as follows: “Our writing as a pedagogy of asylum” 21 and “A space and an association where one can develop the language of hope, a space for combating capitalism in everyday relationships, and for creating community, friendship.” 22 Fournier’s concept of autotheory has a clear feminist and intersectional aspect: the idea of the neutral theorist is questioned and the necessary approach to the I as an I and in the I-ness a very complex thing is framed as theoretically useful and necessary. 17 Felski has argued, within the field of literary criticism, that “Feminist scholarship, while keeping a firm grip on critical analysis, has clearly overcome its fear of feeling. In this respect, it is far ahead of most other forms of contemporary criticism.” 18 (p. 56).
From these fields, we suggest that, reading is:
A collective practice. An emotional practice. An act where the critical and the emotional cannot be easily separated. An act that affects the reader differently depending on the reader’s position within the society—that is, as autistic readers, we are affected by texts about autism in ways that differ from the ways non-autistic readers are affected by them.
Doing an emotional, collective, academic-artistic reading, for us meant this: we read the same books and we discuss. Our discussions take place in writing (since we are persons, for which the written language is the first, rather than spoken language). The writing forms itself into letters, answer–question structures, non-answers, dislocations, diffractions, associations, and translations.
For the reading material, our selected literature consists of three novels:
The kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.
These novels were chosen because they had been within our field of perception. With this we mean, people had told us about them in terms of “oh, have you read this book, it is about autism,” or “this book is clearly about autism,” or “this writer has autism.” Most often, the people approaching us with these reading suggestions were not autistic themselves. As a result, the material is diverse: Hoang is an openly autistic author writing about an openly autistic character. In Honeyman’s and Murata’s novels, the characters are not defined (by themselves or by others) as autistic, but readers, including literary critics, have suggested reading them as autistic. This means the selected novels do not provide a united body of autistic novels—rather, what we investigate in this article is the autistic reading experience of novels that within a (neurotypical or neuromixed) literary context is suggested as being autistic.
In this reading, we are unable to be neutral and distanced observers, since the novels are “about us.” We are forced to become I through the reading. As an answer to this, we choose to become a We. We read as angry autistic people. As sad autistic people, as unhappy yet hopeful autistic people. We read together. Sharing, caring, angry, and loving.
Becoming Lovable, Masking for Neurotypical Love
Within a discourse of neuromixed love (love between different neurotypes), the autistic character is commonly pictured in line with a narrative of autistic monstrosity. This includes different othering practices such as positioning the autist as a sentimental savant, 23 a less than-human-other, 24 the (autistic) psycho-savant, or the autist-as-automaton—what McGrath has referred to as “autistic-brain-as-computer analogy” 5 (p. 29), or with the words of Murray 25 “the autist-as-mathematical-genius trope,” or as mindblind. 26 The neurotypical, on their side, is commonly pictured as a (fully human) savior of the autist, or what we want to refer to as the neurotypical de-monsterizer, with the ability of neurotypical curing. As an illustration of this, we have chosen to discuss our readings of the neuromixed (heterosexual) love story in The kiss quotient by Helen Hoang. 27 The main explicitly named autistic character Stella in The kiss quotient is initially represented as an impossible object of neurotypical love. She is pictured with a machine-likeness with an aptitude and affection for numbers (“skills for numeracy,” 5 (p. 40), as asexual, and with sensory difficulties. Stella’s autistic monstrosity is a sort of failed femininity or vice versa, her failed femininity is monstrous. Michael, the neurotypical male protagonist of the novel, must “earn Stella’s trust” as if she is some sort of nonhuman animal/machine other, which needs to be animated by the (neurotypical human) savior through recognition and translation/support to (a human, gendered, heteronormative) sensory sexual expression and experience. 28 When he has done that, she sees his “true (male) self” and so she becomes (a sensory-heterosexual) human/woman. At the beginning of the novel, Stella is clear about what she wants, and a sexual relationship is not it. But apparently, this is no way to live. While it would have been interesting to see her enter into a relationship that is defined less by neurotypical social and sensory-heterosexual codes [at one point in the novel, couples are described as people who “live together, and […] see each other every day” 27 (p. 154)], or to read what it’s like to do relationships outside “acceptable” parameters, Stella slowly changes herself to fit neurotypical expectations. Every interaction between Stella and Michael positions Stella as gradually moving toward a neurotypical heterosexual-sensorial femininity through the romance with Michael, like spending time in the right (neurotypical) company to make the autist to overcome and unlearn her autism; that is, masking.
For example, when they go for gelato, she chooses her flavor (mint chocolate chip) beforehand and has no intention to share hers or try his. I am also like this so I appreciated her “fussiness.” However, because she’s worried she might insult Michael (“she could never, ever in thousand years hurt him, not even in a trivial way”), they swap spoons and try each other’s, which she actually enjoys! Then, when they step out into the “busy San Francisco night” on their way to go clubbing, she is no longer “just an onlooker”: “[t]here was something novel and wonderful about being in a crowd and not feeling alone” 27 (p. 82). I don’t understand how one can step out into a situation which they don’t usually like (busy, noisy streets), with a new love interest (imagine all the nerves!), and automatically feel “at home.” It’s like she can switch off her autism. With Michael, she can also do eye contact for the first time 27 (p. 173); she suddenly likes going to the shopping mall after a lifelong hatred of it (“she was open to developing a new weekend routine. She was adaptable, especially when things involved Michael”) 27 (p. 176); she can suddenly try all sorts of new and interesting foods, and have him order for her in restaurants, despite her earlier sensitivity to scents, textures, flavors, and smells 27 (p. 1, 187); and, despite being totally focused on her job, it being her one source of regulation and gratification, she is easily able to juggle her time between it and Michael after they get into a relationship. At one point she even decides to quit for him (although it doesn’t materialize). (One of us)
This, I think, is an example of how Stella is being “de-monsterized” by Michael. Or how he apparently “de-monsterizes” the world for her. I get frustrated with this episode because it is the opposite of what I have experienced myself; when being in a relationship I feel busy environments are even more stressful because I feel my attention is split between the world and the relation-person. I feel like Stella is depicted a bit like Frankenstein’s monster trying to figure their way through the world when Michael shows up and helps her become a real (WO/HU)man. (One of us)
The neurotypical savior position goes hand in hand with what McDermott 14 writes about the fixative power of the neurotypical gaze. In The kiss quotient, the fixative power of the neurotypical gaze does not belong to the medical discourse, but the neuromixed love discourse. It is like the neurotypical savior needs the autistic sentimental savant to become the savior, but also how a minority may be allowed the role of the savior in relation to a more marginalized minority 29 —as in the case of The kiss quotient; the heterosexual male prostitute neurotypical savior (Michael) of the female autistic savant (Stella).
A similar neurotypical curing (masking), as Stella’s hetero/neuronormalization in The Kiss Quotient, is happening in the case of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. 30 The plot in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is centered around a portrayal of trauma and neurological atypicality embodied by the female protagonist Eleanor Oliphant. Eleanor has been read in paratexts as autistic, as
“described with certain traits that are commonly associated with people who are on the autism spectrum. For example, she is described as being socially awkward, having intense emotional reactions to things, and having a desire for routine and repetition. She also displays a large variance in abilities that tends to be seen in people with autism (being very good at certain things).” 31
At the same time, the author herself has stressed that Eleanor is not autistic but a “product of nurture, not nature; traumatic events in her childhood have shaped her.” 31 Here the curing from trauma is made with a few sessions of a lovingly neurotypical female therapist and after meeting a nice male, somewhat nerdy friend. Neither the friend nor Eleanor is explicitly named autistic in the novel, but we code them both as moving autistically. Eleanor is early on in the novel pictured in line with the “empty fortress”—autism metaphor, 32 where the autistic child is placed within an emotionless bubble, lacking empathy with others’ pain, but also as having “skills for numeracy,” being asexual, engaged in wordplay/pattern recognition, and rigidly bound by routines. Reading the picturing of Eleanor results in a sense of frustration and anger with both the protagonist and the author for us, a sense that the author wants to keep the reader and the protagonist apart; to alienate Eleanor, and the reader to disidentify with Eleanor.
Only fifty or so pages into Honeyman’s novel, and I am getting increasingly frustrated at how Eleanor’s social differences are portrayed as funny and quirky. I feel like “quirky” comes up a lot in novels about autistic women. Like our differences are there as a source of light entertainment. I don’t suppose that many of us would find it funny if we overheard our colleagues talking about how freakish we are [referring to a scene near the beginning when Eleanor’s colleagues are laughing at her from another room]. We would probably berate ourselves for once again coming across as “odd,” “enigmatic,” mere spectacles to be laughed at over morning coffee. It’s true that we often “social faux pas,” but most of us really do try to make ourselves comprehensible and approachable, and we tend to be horrified or appalled if we offend anyone. Again, it’s us neurodivergents who have to do all the work to align with NT conventions, instead of the NTs meeting us halfway. It makes me think of how the book is almost the antithesis of the “double empathy problem” 33 because misunderstandings in the novel aren’t caused by mutual incomprehension, but by Eleanor’s total ineptitude when it comes to understanding that others have feelings. (One of us)
On the contrary, there are moments of autistic play in the novel, as in descriptions of wordplay/pattern recognition, which sets an “autistic” tone to the novel.
I ran the words through my mind again, over and over, the same technique I used for solving crossword anagrams, waiting for the letters to settle into a pattern. (…) “Hollywood,” I said, finally. “Holly would, and so would Eleanor.”
She ignored my wordplay, and lifted up the towel. 30 (p. 15)
In the quotes above, Eleanor is introduced as having different needs and pleasures than her surrounding, which cause us to feel identified with/share a sense of joy with the protagonist, and a sense of a friendly author gesture toward the reader. At the same time, the joy is abruptly broken with a neurotypical silencing, where the attendant at the beauty salon Eleanor is getting a beauty makeover is ignoring the wordplay, and abruptly lifts up the towel. In the next moments in the novel, Eleanor, unknowingly of the meaning of intimate waxing, requests such service from the attendant, resulting in her being upset with the attendant. This picturing is in line with ideas of learning-disabled women as asexual and with a childish naivety, 34 and further repeats the othering (neurotypical) gaze at Eleanor. The behaviors are soon described as a result of childhood trauma and as Eleanor starts the process of curing, becoming an adult woman, about halfway in the novel the strange (monstrous) behaviors are slowly fading as Eleanor becomes more “normal.” The link between hetero/neuronormalcy and empathy is reasserted.
I am becoming unsettled about the link between childhood abuse and villainy. I’m thinking about how it feeds into the narrative about how autism is caused by parenting and upbringing. Honeyman is intermixing autistic-coded behaviors with trauma. As I read on and on, I see that Eleanor is not supposed to be autistic but traumatized. It’s her upbringing, not her neurology, that made her so socially and emotionally inept. It’s the fault of her cold, heartless, and neglectful “refrigerator” mother. The novel must have been inspired either directly or indirectly by Bettelheim. 35 How sad. (One of us)
I find this entire book (Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine) abrasive and insensitive. I’m not sure when it became acceptable or fashionable to use trauma as a literary device. But I don’t read Eleanor as autistic. She definitely has traits identifiable with autism (like routine, hypersensitivity, and same-fooding), but she sheds them as she “regains” her humanity, so I read them as a by-product of trauma. I can understand why you want to include it in our paper on autism. Because it’s an extremely popular book, and I can absolutely see many, many readers who aren’t familiar with autism/have an outdated understanding being led to think that this is what autism is. (One of us)
There are several uncomfortable, intertextual linkings here, illustrating the works of the neurotypical gaze as not only neurotypical but also as heteronormative gendering. For example, in linking intertextually between “standard depictions of autistic (…) deficits” 36 and forms of psychiatric disorders, such as childhood trauma, narratives of failed femininity in the case of bad mothering are being reproduced. 37 Similarly, when linking intertextually between neurotypical female sociality and empathy (as in the emotional expression toward the crying baby or the social impact of the haircut and makeover), successful adult femininity as neurotypical and heteronormative is being reproduced. As seen through our reading diaries, this depiction of the autistic-coded characters is hurtful. Reading autistically, we engage in the text as “fusing” with it 38 —becoming so immersed in the reading that the self is partly or completely absorbed by the text. Reading about situations or positions that are violent in this state confuses and creates anger. We cannot neutrally read the monsterized autistic.
Looking for an Autistic Normal, Unmasking for Autistic Love
Oh, I thought absently, I’ve become a foreign object. (…) The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me. 39 (p. 80, 81)
He grabbed me by my shoulders in his excitement. “Furukura, you’re lucky, you know. Thanks to me, you can go from being triply handicapped as a single, virgin convenience store worker to being a married member of society. Everyone will assume you’re a sexually active, respectable human being. That’s the image of you that pleases them most. Isn’t that wonderful? 39 (p. 140)
About halfway through Sayaka Murata’s novel Convenience Store Woman, 39 the character Shiraha comes into the story. He is a colleague of the main female protagonist Keiko who has been read by paratexts as autistic. At first, Keiko is extremely annoyed by Shiraha since he does not respect the rules of the store. After a while, he is fired, becomes homeless, and almost accidentally moves in with Keiko. He lives in her bathroom, does not leave the room, and wants her to keep their relationship a secret. We code Shiraha as somehow neurodivergent, because of the way he acts. Shiraha’s and Keiko’s relationship is, according to Shiraha’s logic, perfect for them both—he has a place to stay and she has a boyfriend. Here, the neurodivergent relationship is portrayed as depressing, self-destructive, and monstrous.
There is so much about “lying,” but it’s not lying, it’s just adapting. I do that all the time. I also think about mimicry. And about the connectedness to the store, rather than to people, to desire a place and its things. I really do recognize the feeling of never being upset, like, what is the point of getting upset? The pleasure of non-change. But the slow change, it does change. The pleasure of noticing the super-small changes. Is autism a socialist thing? Is socialism an autist thing? To be fixed. RULES. I think about the non-normalness of Shiraha, how people get upset, how Keiko needs to handle it, and how there are different kinds of weirdness, and I think about masking. All the time. The pleasure of masking, like winning a game. (One of us)
The gender difference, Shiraha vs Keiko, is like a picture of female undiagnosed and well-masked autism. Girls know they need to be fixed because they are taught. What to think-feel about change? I think-feel this story is so sad, about eliminating the strange parts. I wonder, what is happiness? I also think about resignation. I always tell people I live with Zlatan (she’s my cat), and I totally get how Keiko thinks of Shiraha as a pet. Transactions are suddenly clear. It is so telling and also sad that people get so happy as soon as Keiko does something “normal.” (One of us)
This goes in line with how Sara Ahmed has described the rules of happiness—how fictions and mainstream stories tend to depict people of color and queer people as unhappy—along with Ahmed’s figures of “unhappy queers” and “melancholic migrants,” 40 one can add the trope of the anxious autist. Keiko’s behavior disturbs others—her own emotions are seldom depicted, only as the relief of pulling off a human face. Another aspect of this is the unhappiness of the autist herself. That is more central in the novels of Honeyman and Hoang. But this unhappiness is clearly the result of the view of neurotypicals. Eleanor doesn’t know she’s unhappy until she’s told she is. Stella is unhappy because of the expectations to marry and not be queer. Ahmed argues that “the word happiness does things […] it can be a judgment that others are doing well, even when we do not presume access to another’s interiority” 40 (p. 199) For Keiko, Eleanor, and Stella, it is clear that happiness is an obligation. And they are failing to be happy. McDermott argues that autistic love is not understood as love by neurotypicals—and therefore not categorized as love at all. The same could be said about happiness. Autistic happiness cannot be understood unless it follows neurotypical rules. It cannot even be understood by the autist herself as happiness if it diverges from the neurotypical path of happiness.
Re-reading your thought [1st author], I thought about both Convenience Store Woman and Eleanor Oliphant as stories of being a failed woman because of traits of autism, and having a relationship with a neurodivergent man – but where this relation is completely disallowed by the surrounding world because he is a weirdo dragging her down into weirdness and their relationship are portrayed to the reader as (self-) destructive as if the female protagonist will totally cease to be human if she continues to see him and have this stranger relationship that REALLY is not to be understood as love because that would upset all ideas of what love is [i.e. something that makes one human (?)]. (One of us)
Possibilities of (an)other Happy Endings, Unmasking Neurodivergent Love
After we hung up, I looked at myself in the mirror. I had aged since the day I’d been reborn as a convenience store worker. That didn’t bother me, except that I got tired more easily than before. I sometimes wondered what would become of me if I got too old to work here. 39 (p. 75)
Similar to The kiss quotient and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, the narrative of autistic monstrosity is a central theme in Convenience Store Woman. However, it is a more ambivalent picturing of monstrosity, opening up for another (unmasked) autistic love. In a review of the novel, Culture Editor Alex Blank 41 suggests “an autistic reading” of the text and the protagonist as a “Neurodivergent Normal.”
What’s appealing about Muraka’s novel is the emphasis on the character’s lack of situating herself as an outsider. Keiko doesn’t see herself as other; it’s the people around her who are strange, unintelligible, and confusing. Though there are no two autistic people who are the same, it’s important to note that from a neurodivergent perspective, it is often neurotypicals who seem abnormal. 41
Unlike in the portrayal of Stella and Elinor where the narrative is centering the curability of the autist through the loving intervention of the neurotypical (a demand of masking to be a successful neurotypical object of love), Keiko stays grotesque and potentially dangerous. She is framed as pathological, as uncurable precisely because of her autism, as though autism is some kind of a living breathing agent that takes hold of the person and contaminates them. This echoes Yergeau’s writings on the supposed nonagency of neurodivergent people, as they observe that in medical and cultural narratives, diagnosis/neurological status reduces a person to their medical label: “mental disability […] wields more agency than mentally disabled people” 2 (p. 10). Yergeau also argues that “autistic people’s wills are merely the wills of neurobiology. […] [A]utism is what’s moving and breathing” 2 (p. 17, 16). As autism becomes associated with questionable morals and asocial behaviors, the autistic grotesque in the texts is not so much reduced to neurodivergent habits and customs, but to cultural attitudes regarding what autism is or “means.” The autistic grotesque therefore acts as a pathological archetype, fueling the reader’s desire for a good story, while affirming their moral superiority (I may not be perfect, but at least I’m not like them).
Similar to our experiences of Honeyman’s novel, as we read Muraka’s novel, we are being thrown back and forth between frustration, sadness, and anger, a sense of being forced by the author to disidentify with the protagonist, to be part of the neurotypical othering of the protagonist. Similarly, there are also moments of autistic happiness in the novel. Among them are descriptions of sensory pleasures, and a sense of comfort in routines, which sets an “autistic” tone to the novel, and that also introduces Keiko as having different needs and pleasures than her surroundings. This causes us to feel identified with/share a sense of joy with the protagonist, and a sense of a friendly author gesture toward the autistic reader:
“A convenience store is a world of sound. (…) It all blends into the convenience store sound that ceaselessly caresses my eardrums. I hear the faint rattle of a new plastic bottle rolling into place as a customer takes one out of the refrigerator, and look up instantly. A cold drink is often the last item customers take before coming to the checkout till, and my body responds automatically to the sound.” 39 (p. 1)
“I automatically read the customer’s minutest movements and gaze, and my body acts reflexively in response. My ears and eyes are important sensors to catch every move and desire. Taking the utmost care not to cause the customer any discomfort by observing him or her too closely, I swiftly move my hands according to whatever signals I pick up. 39 (p. 3, 4)
In line with theories of autistic masking, Keiko is pictured as “copying” 39 (p. 51), and “mimicking” 39 (p. 53) other people, and when she shows feelings similar to others, she notes, “there was a strange sense of solidarity as everyone seemed pleased that I was angry too… good, I pulled off being a ‘person’” 39 (p. 54). But more recurrently is her sense of being outside of the personhood of “everyone.”
Reading Murata’s novel I am heartbroken and angry. I really want to love the cruel child but the world tells her, tells me, to be silent. It reminds me so much of my childhood. It was not as traumatic, and I was always silent so not really silenced (that I remember), but I was told I “walked so incredibly strange,” and after that spent years reducing my happy way of walking to something more normal. I want to love the bird-eating child but the story tells me she is dangerous. And part of me loves being this heartbroken and angry. Being an author myself I always come back to the cruel children and the strange childhoods. I like being in the sort of miserable world of silence. The ambiguous thing about Murata’s work is that I can’t really put my finger on the perspective. It’s from within (“I”), but also from outside. I think it captures the internalized way of making oneself a stranger, of self-hatred, that very much characterizes being part of a minority – in this case being the only autistic. There is a sense of “spectacle” surrounding the convenience store and the narrator – as if the author wants the reader to feel a little bit disgusted but very much amazed, that “this is also a human.” (One of us)
As observed in Honeyman’s and Murata’s novels, the autistic protagonist is cast as the ultimate “other,” lacking the empathy and compassion that we commonly equate with personhood. As Hoang’s and Honeyman’s novels demonstrate, the only hope of retribution is to mask, to assimilate oneself with neurodivergent habits and customs, and to become more and more like the neurotypical savior until the autism becomes residual or, ideally, obsolete. And for the autistic author to keep to writing practices of literary masking. However, unlike Hoang’s and Honeyman’s novels where masking/the neurotypical cure is framed as the only possible happy ending, Murata offers an alternative happy ending. This is a happy ending, which is also about picturing a neurodivergent normal (in no need of curing) as suggested by Alex Blank and where an unmasked, alternative neurodivergent love is possible, including what McDermott 14 has explored as “autistic acts of love and care.”
Regarding, DESIRE. I relate McDermott’s 14 analysis of “autistic acts of love and care” 14 (p. 9), to what is recognized as desire. I feel safe reading about life in the store, I feel pleasure when reading about following the rules and serving others. I recognize this pleasure, I am also very good at reading customers and acting like a salesperson, it is satisfyingly exhausting. The sensory world, sounds. Fascination and delight. Is this a critique of consumption? I feel pleasure and desire. It is like following a choreography – sensory body delight. Is pleasure linked to being normal? Also a delight in imitation. There is like a mystery game, like finding clues on how to act, so very relatable. (One of us)
It was a hot day, yet the stock of mineral water in the fridge was low. There was only one inconspicuously placed two-liter carton of barley tea out there too, although these always sold well in hot weather. I could hear the store′s voice telling me what it wanted, how it wanted it to be. I understood it perfectly. 39 (p. 159)
More than a person, I’m a convenience store worker. Even if that means I’m abnormal and can’t make a livening and drop dead, I can’t escape that fact. My very cells exist for the convenience store. 39 (p. 161)
These last quotes are putting Keiko in a position where she sees herself as a non-person, or perhaps as another kind of subject. She is defined by her relation, not to the human world (she is not a mother or a lover) but to an inanimate place filled with inanimate objects. She is a lover but to the store. The novel by Murata ends with:
I could distinctly feel all my cells stirring within my skin as they responded in unison to the music reverberating on the other side of the glass. 39 (p. 163)
The life of the worker and the store is described as having sex. Working is like dating. I think of the sensory pleasures in commercial and capitalist life. (One of us)
The love and desire for the store. It is beautiful, but so sad no one recognizes she loves the place. Then she gives up being human. I feel so relieved. (One of us)
Conclusions
The autistic grotesque figure in fiction is a way of translating the autistic experience to a neurotypically understandable pose, making autistic experiences tellable as non-neurotypical, less human, as (an)other experiences. Counternarrating the othering, one can rather suggest Simmel’s position of the stranger,42,43 from which autism and autistic bodyminds can be seen “as a vantage point from which the range of humanity can be viewed” 42 (p. 36). Rather than safeguarding normality, saying the grotesque is not a human agent, instead “autism is what’s moving and breathing” 2 (p. 16), as a way to make the autistic characters accessible to a neurotypical audience, we want rather suggest the reading of the autistic and the neurotypical alike is a dramaturgical tool to unveil humanity, a possible critique of society and its (normative) inhabitants’ ways of being in the world.
In our particular choice of fiction, we have focused on gendered images of the autistic grotesque, where the autistic grotesque becomes a figure of failed heterosexual femininity. The monstrosity of the autistic grotesque becomes visible when the woman does not act as a heteronormative, neurotypical female should, 44 the failed autistic females are written as almost inhuman. Yet, the trope of failed femininity and the autistic grotesque is used for its rhetorical function of questioning humanity. The autistic grotesque figure is therefore both an alien female and a dramaturgical tool to unveil humanity, as a critique of narrow norms. What we find problematic in this is perhaps first and foremost the way the autistic characters are (supposed to) develop. There is an idea of neurotypical development, close to curing and being neurotypical adaptable (to be an expert masker), that becomes obvious when the quirkiness of the female autistic grotesque is humorously exposed; as a sign of involuntary not a conscious, freely chosen unmasking. She is supposed to get married—but she does not want marriage—but she is unconsciously sad because she is not married. Keiko as well as Eleanor are written as quirky—and in their quirkiness they are unhappy. Sara Ahmed points out how queer and non-White people are portrayed as unhappy, as well as described as in need of development. Alongside the “melancholic migrant” and the “unhappy queer,” 40 there is a space for the miserable autistic female. Ahmed shows how “the promise of happiness” points to the future, which in our case shows how the autistic traits of Keiko and Eleanor are supposed to be overcome. Not being able to develop, to get it together, means you are denied an adult (happy) future. We are so happy for Keiko and her convenience store.
Footnotes
Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.
Funding Information
No funding was received for this article.
Authorship Confirmation Statement
H.B.R. and A.N. have conceptualized, drafted, revised, and developed this article until acceptance. All authors have reviewed and approved this article submission. Both authors acknowledge the important input of Sarinah O’Donoghue as discussant on early versions of this article. This article has been given solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere.