Author: ataylor5@mail.umw.edu

Breakout Group 4/27/21

Bryce Anderson, Daniella colon-cosme, Haley Schnitzer, Lanie Taylor ( Scribe) 

Haley: The list relates to the characters we saw throughout the book with many of the characters being neuroqueer. 

Bryce: I think in terms it’s like…Aster at some points we get a glimpse of what she feels in terms of her psychological state and how her personality bucks interactions with others and identifying self-consciousness with how she interacts with others. Mentions the end of part 3, and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing and ruin the mood. It carries out throughout the book, and things that most people do not think about, and how she has to make an effort to interact in the way that neurotypical people would interact. 

Lanie: Agrees,  Aster likes to mimic and to make sure she thinks about what she says to avoid angering others. 

Bryce: Giselle and Aster played house, but kissing Theo made her feel different. It’s sort of like she doesn’t know how to move around Theo, or interact in the ‘right’ she becomes hyper-aware of her actions. 

Talks about the sex scene between Aster and Theo and how it affected Aster. She was out of her comfort zone and Theo helped make her feel welcome and comfortable

Bryce: Talks about the racial differences and how it affects how they are seen. Lowerdeckers being seen as not desirable, which Theo counteracts with being attracted to Aster and seeing her as beautiful. They value each other in an emotional way and that’s even a sort of transformative experience for Aster because she is able to connect with someone on a different level. 

Bryce: The note was sweet and creepy. 

Lanie: we have to stan Theo for his asking for consent, 

Bryce: Aster had to give a physical maker and say yes, for that consent. 

Breakout room 2 

Haley: What did you think about the ending?

Bryce: Bittersweet. But at what cost? For freedom for freedom’s sake to just get off. But there was loss with it and that is always sad. 

Lanie: Its

Daniella: It’s bittersweet that she was able to get off the ship, but at what cost

Bryce: It feels like, as a message goes, she has the choice, freedom that exists, but at what cost. Is it worth it to live on the planet where you are the only one, maybe there are other people on that earth. Survival is key. They must have left for a reason. Read a scene where Aster wanted to bring Giselle back to life, how it relates back to Aster’s ability to grow plants. Their relationship is almost a foil, Aster has a consequence for being neurodivergent, Giselle has her own disability, but she lives on the outside able to express herself. She was almost a balance to Aster, even though there were differences, she showed Aster how to be ‘normal’ in a way. 

Lanie: Agrees, Giselle is loud and expressive, Aster is drawn in within herself, and quiet. 

Bryce: Giselle ran around Matilda, through the vents and finding where Asters mother was. The fact that aster said that she was sad to find her mother’s skeleton, but it was harder with Giselle, and now she has to bury her sister on an empty planet. 

Foss: The amount of time on the ship has been 300 years, but on earth, it has been about 1,000 years. 

Haley: Confused behind the motivation behind the people being on the ship and why they were seeking out a new planet. 

Daniella: Like the ending and how it was up to interpretation 

 Breakout room 3

Lanie: It read a lot like how the others did

Haley: Did think it was interesting that it brought up the first known piece of literature from an autistic author. that this text is contrasting what everyone else’s piece worked on

Bryce: it was interesting in the way it went about reassigning meaning to the text, talks about the part that autists and their category of specific behavior that would be classified as not neurotypical. There was a need to classify everything. he thinks that separation would not be accomplishable. 

Lanie: Talks about how classifying people based on different diagnoses and part dehumanizes them

Haley: Talks about ejaculation and how it is interesting. How people oversexualized autistic people, and how it makes it inappropriate. 

Bryce: How do you redefine that, it can be used, but there are better words that could accurately describe the abrupt utterances of an autistic person. There is a sort of negative framing that is inherent in the definition of the world that harkens back to old categorizing, or old discoveries in the field of autism. 

Bryce: Tells foss about wanting to separate the original meaning of the definitions and to take it away from that negative connotation. That categorizing is a pathological activity, whereas any other behavior is seen as normal and does not need logging. Trying to define it, feels like trying to define a single ‘normal’ person.

Breakout group: Brianna Fridriksson, Faith Hopkins, David Claeson, Lanie Taylor(Scribe)

Faith: it was a hard piece to read, but it was a good piece because it gave a bunch of background, such as court cases, and what actually happened. Other pieces have given us opinions, but this gives us actual facts and discrimination. It tied it together for me and helped me see why it is such an important topic. 

Lanie(Scribe): brings up how autistic individuals are viewed on how they affect neurotypicals

Brianna: I thought that it was interesting how there is a concept of dividing neurodiverse and neurotypical. They always think that it just ‘happens’ and wanting to fix whatever is going on. Classes, school, medication, etc. Connects that to her high school and how seniors had to have volunteer and she volunteered at a special class at an elementary school. She got to see firsthand how some parents reacted/interacted with their children. How parents are the biggest part of how disabled the child feels. 

David: parents support how they treat their child. It is the most important factor. 

Brianna: Agrees that it is very important. She talked about a little boy how his parent did not want to deal with her child. The parent was completely dismissive of the child’s disability and it affected the child in his confidence in his learning. It does fall onto the parent. 

Faith: agrees with the parent being a big depending factor.

Lanie(scribe): Talked about my cousin and how his parents treated him the same as their other children and that it helped him have a sense of normalcy rather than being treated based on his disability. 

Brianna: relates back to her experience at the preschool

Faith: talks about her mom and how she works with an autistic nonverbal child and how she wanted to include the child. 

Pt: 2

Lanie(scribe): People with any sort of illness is blamed on demonic possession

Faith: Talks about how Frankenstein’s monster is a bad representation of autism because it demonizes autism. 

Breakout Group

Lanie Taylor (Note taker), Karlie Jahn, Faith Hopkins, Arden Jones

Arden noticed a theme throughout the readings in how disability is sexualized
Faith: Talks about how people thought disabled people would be better off dead
Faith: Talks about the image from the stories, how the way we put in the narrative to support the healthiness of the main character with the disabled friend.
Arden: Disabled characters are there to uplift the nondisabled character
Faith: Disabled people are there to teach the main characters to enjoy life and that it is not fair because disabled people can enjoy life
Faith: disability as a prosthesis, used as a crutch to perceive normalcy.
Karlie: It is the idea of the main character having the cynical view and when seeing the disabled character, they have a positive change of heart
Arden: Feels that disabled people should be the ones to represent disability, but it could potentially damaging
Faith: Most shows and movies only focus on the struggle of the disability, not the positive aspects
Arden: says that disability is apart of someone, but it should not be the only thing that the show focuses on
Faith: Deaf people almost lost their way of communication by almost being banned from using sign language
Gay people were also considered to be disabled

Alaina’s Response to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden

I have grown up reading Burnette’s The Secret Garden and it is one of my favorite pieces to revisit whenever I can. For the longest time, I had viewed Colin’s illness as one that allowed those around him to spoil him. That his father’s fear of him developing a hunched back like his own was what started the journey that disabled Colin. Colin having several illnesses throughout childhood had further led everyone to believe that there was something truly wrong with him. That he would not live to adulthood, which was something that caused him to act like a spoiled brat who got whatever he desired. It was their own fears, as well as Colins, that was the main cause of his disability. The adults around Colin treated him as if he would break, that if they went against him he would end up exhausting himself to the point where he would pass away. Because Colin was unable to have a normal childhood, he turned into himself and saw any sort of flaw as the next sign of his impending death. 

Mary was a girl who saw past the adult’s fear and Colin’s tantrum to see that he was perfectly normal. That the cause of his illness was his own and that he was a boy who was as spoiled as she was when she was in India. When she realized that he was as normal as she was, she and her friend Dickon came up with the idea that the garden would heal Colin, making him stronger than he was because of his preserved disability. The innocence of a child was able to see that Colin’s disability was something that can be ‘fixed’ by going outside and experiencing things that he had been previously kept from. Colin had been confined to laying down in order to prevent the hunched back, he was prevented from anything stressful or exciting in order to prevent him from going into a fit. The one time he did go out he read about an illness and immediately caught that illness, which makes me believe that Colin might be one to believe that he could get any sort of illness that he reads about. A hypochondriac. “…One time they took him out where the roses is by the fountain. He’d been readin’ in a paper about people gettin’ somethin’ he called ‘rose cold’ an’ he began to sneeze an’ said he’d got it an’ then a new gardener as didn’t know th’ rules passed by an’ looked at him curious. He threw himself into a passion an’ he said he’d looked at him because he was going to be a hunchback. He cried himself into a fever an’ was ill all night,” (Burnett) 

He is so afraid of dying or not being able to live he continuously works himself up and becomes ill. Mary is what brings life to him. She shows him that she was like him, always ill and angry with the world. Mary becomes a savior, finding ways to bring life to Colin, standing up against his anger, and teaching him life is worth living no matter what is wrong. She uses the garden to make herself stronger and in turn Colin. She takes a place where there was a loss of life and turns it into a haven for the two of them. She is what brings life back into the garden and in turn the entire manor. Showing them that fear of disability is not something to worry about, that life is worth living. 

Word Count = 604

Breakout room 3/10/24

Lanie, Lu, Shane, and Haley

  • When someone is disabled, their future is actually decided for them
  • Disabled people do not get a lot of say in what they want
  • Instead of wanting to do best for disabled people, non-disabled people want to do what would make their own lives easier 
  • “Your disability is causing ME all these problems”
  • It is like they are punishing people for having a disability
  • Forced assimilation 
  • Prosthetics are used for cosmetic purposes instead of actual aid as a way to conform 
  • People with cochlear implants are treated poorly within the deaf and hearing communities because deaf communities say they are basically hearing, but hearing people do not consider them to be same as them
  • Children with Deaf/HOH say they are aligned with deaf community and there’s debates on if that is okay or not
  • Parents of disabled children want to be rewarded for being parents of disabled children because they see disability as a bad thing
  • Parents/non-disabled people make it all about themselves instead of asking what disabled people want

Alaina Taylor (Writer), Faith Hopkins (F), Lily Sportsman (L), and Arden Jones (A)

F: Points out that how there was a lot of disability that occurred on plantations that were never recorded, or if they were they were recorded by white men, so they could have altered it, making it less severe than it possibly could have, made or it more intellectual disability 

L: Accounts were definitely whitewashed, a lot of the disabilities could have been caused by someone who was white, physical, and mental. PTSD. It is easy to make the assumptions that the accounts were whitewashed

A: During that time slaves were not taught to read or write, so they could have been taken advantage of. 

L: Slaveowners might have been ashamed of their slaves’ disability

Lanie: Wilson in the reading was maimed by the slave owners to where he lost strength in his arm.

L: They could have overlooked disability because the slaves would be seen as less valuable 

A: Disability among slaves was considered normal because they were already considered lesser than, so already disabled

F: Sambose: what does it mean. Trauma shock and created the sambos effect. Causes mental trauma 

Dr. F: 

A: Makes a connection to what occurred during the holocaust 

F: Sambose was a justification for slavery, that slaves needed ‘guidance from white slave owners, because of the belief of degraded mentality 

A: Slaveowners needed to have a way to be self-justifying.  

A: Makes a connection to of Mice and Men with lenny being threatened over the wife 

F: Makes a connection to To kill a mockingbird and to Tom Robinson and the racial divide between people of color and white folks. 

A: They were frustrated with the trial result, the results made them angry because the racist jury went against Robinson even though Atticus had a good argument that should have won. 

F: Didn’t think about why they were guilty at first, not under later when she is rereading it does she get that the jury was racist. 

Round 2

F: Points out the passage, ” Some people are born gifted…” she likes it because not everyone is created equal, we are all different. Some of us need more support while some do not need any. It makes a lot of sense that all men are created equal in the courtroom, but nowhere else

A: We all wish we lived in a world where we are all treated nicely. Agrees with Faith on how honest the reality of things and that it is not sugar-coated. 

F: This goes to show what Atticus is trying to accomplish. Tom is not treated as equally as others, both because of race and because of his physical disability. 

Lanie: Points out the fact that the kids were sitting up in the colored section, breaking boundaries, 

F: Agrees

A: Didn’t like the fact people gave up the fact that people gave up their seats. Racism is taught. Talks about how Jem wanted Atticus to win. They wanted to have a good ending. 

F: Likes how the book shows the hard truth about racism. It is a good idea to read the book to show how racism is and was. That racism exists and should be talked about 

A: Struck a chord because their mom is someone who works in the court that protects people of color or disability, It hit a personal chord. 

Lanie: He just wanted to help the girl he was accused of raping. 

A: Makes a connection to Lennie and curlys wife. How she used her status to threaten those around her. 

F: Does this happen now?

A and Lanie: Yep

A: Atticus’s speech brings light to how the world is still racist and bad things occur. 

F: In the courtroom, these things need to be pushed aside and people need to be treated equally 

A: Yes, don’t use differences to advantage

F: Points out how bias the jury was 

Dr. F: Voter suppression was not a thing then, and it was not a surprise that there was no one of color on the jury

The Creator and the Creation Breakout Group 2/4

Brianna Fridriksson (B), Lanie Taylor (L), Nicholas Bergmeister (N), Aspaisa Sheppard (A)

The Creature: Breakout room 1

B: I think that the first bit of the story where we see, where we get introduced to victor and seeing where the creature begun his origin. It was interesting how the creature was living in the little house attached to the family. It was an ode to a learning disability. How the family took in a girl and started teaching her, while the creature was watching and teaching himself because of how the people would be scared of him. He was on his own in teaching himself, which he is able to teach himself because we see him later being very articulate.

L: I agree. He taught himself and when he stole the books, he taught himself further off of those books.

B: compares to being in another language, where you have to piece in what you know with what you have to figure out things on your own.

A: This might be a bit of a stretch but I feel like the book shows different disabilities or hints of different disabilities. Like Brianna said there’s the learning disability, somewhat of a visual physical disability since it’s a creation and learning to use the different parts.

N: He doesn’t think that the creature has a disability. He looks different, but reminds victor that he is stronger and better than any other human.

B: We can argue either way, it is largely up to interperatation. Looking at both sides, one part, it is victors story, and the other piece where the creature tells his story. The creature has his own mistakes, but is also having to deal with what victor did to him. He was also made up of different parts. The creature could have inhearented something from the parts he was made up of.

A: Agrees that the creature is dealing with the repercussions and consequences because of victor.

B: Marry Shelley is had a lot of children deaths. So that could have affected the story in that way.

L: He wasn’t necessarily “raised” and doesn’t understand right from wrong. Usually if a child is raised by their parent they understand right from wrong, but because the creature wasn’t necessarily raised, he is lacking that right from wrong. So he turns his anger into physical violence.

B: Agrees that he is like a child with an absent parent.

N: He points out that the creature doens’t think he would be accepted, and thats why he wanted someone to have with him. Who accepts him.

B: I think that can come back with disassociation with others who don’t have the disability.

Victor Frankenstein: he Creator: Breakout room 2

L: He is whiney, and is woe is me even though he causes most of his problems

B: We are supposed to simpathize with him because he is human. He created a creature to show that he could even though he didn’t have to

A: I think he was excited to do the creating part of the process but then everything afterwards he was like “yeah no”

L: Why make the creature

B: He sees himself making the creature. like a puzzle, why would he be so scared of the creature coming to life. Its not a beatuty and the situation

L: He might make it to test himself

B: He should have been more happy about the creature

A: I think he sees it as a creation and as science, then when it worked and came to life, he’s shocked. In a way I don’t think he was prepared for what the creature became and what its capable of doing.

B: He didn’t think that the creature wouldn’t have been capable, not so superhuman

B: Sivant syndrome, smart in one field, but doesn’t deal with people.

L: Asperbergs, Victor might have aspebergers, because he becomes so hyper fixed on tasks, is incredibly smart and has social issues. Large bouts of depression and becomes hyper fixiated on tasks. Such as when he was hunting the creature and essentially killed his dogs in the hunt. and almost dying himself.

A: I’m trying to think of an example but the only one I can come up with is kids with toys. They’re excited to get the toy and have the new toy but as soon as it’s unboxed and in their hands, they have already moved on. For the disability lens, he seems disconnected from things that are happening. I’m not sure about what disability(s) Victor has but it’s possibly schizophrenia or asbergers?

N: Thinks more of a character with a personality disorder. When he is talking to the judge, he fits the picture of identity disorder, or illusions. Grandiose, or disillusioned.

B: He is irresponsible, he has a large ego

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