When reading “Misfit,” I immediately recognized the disparity between the responses to someone with autism in humans versus nature. In the poem, the narrator says, “the birds knew I was Autistic; they found no wrong with anything,” followed by the contrast of the narrator saying, “men and women stared at my nodding; they labeled me as a misfit” (Mukhopadhyay). The idea that the birds see the narrator’s autism as no wrong, or nothing out of the ordinary symbolizes a sort of innocence from the ablest mindset of normalcy compared to disability. I perceive the birds as being innocent of societies wrongful influence on young people’s view of those with disabilities such as autism, compared to the men and women who have already been influenced by the harmful idea that able bodies are the only “normal” bodies. I relate this concept to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird because of the way Scout perceives Tom Robinson. Although I am comparing Scout’s perception of race and the bird’s perception of disability, I believe both characters relay the same idea of innocence to societies false interpretations that some people are superior to others. For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is often confused about why Tom Robinson’s race is the reason for the townspeople rooting against him and for his guilty sentence even though he was innocent. Since Scout grew up with Atticus teaching her to treat everyone as equals, from treating Walter Cunningham respectfully to defending Tom Robinson in court, she hasn’t been introduced to the racist ideologies within other people in Maycomb. Scout not knowing the ideas of racism resembles the birds in “Misfit,” since the birds don’t know that humans have set ideas of what is normal and what is seen as different or “misfit.” The views that Scout and the birds have on both Tom Robinson and the narrator with autism are refreshing since they don’t carry any negative and false societal impressions of racism or ableism.
Keona May’s Major Project
“I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work.”
Keona May
My idea for this project was originally going to be in the form of a paper. My original plan was to write a paper about how the adult characters in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” could have and should have intervened with the children’s treatment of Arthur Radley and taught them sooner that just because someone is different does not innately make them dangerous.
For instance, in the beginning of the novel when Dill was asking for a description of Arthur, Jem gave a detailed, exaggerated and embellished statement and said, “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained” (Lee 47). Then he said, “there was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time” which made Dill respond with, “Let’s try to make him come out” so they could “see what he looks like” (Lee 48). This initial association with Arthur, who they also never referred to by his actual name and solely called him Boo, with monster-like qualities caused them to torment Arthur with games about him, and they invested many hours into devising schemes to get him to come outside only to fuel their own imaginative curiosities about what he looked like. In other words, instead of taking the time to get to know Arthur or considering that the reason he remained inside is because of something he cannot control or perhaps a disability, they immediately villainized him and dehumanized him completely by making him this character who they must see simply because he is different from them. Of course this judgment can be understandable since they are children and have not had much exposure to the world yet, in addition to the time period the book takes place, racism is still rampant, and hence it is a societal norm to judge others different than them whether that be based on race, overall appearance or financial status, etc. However, adult characters like Atticus and Miss Maudie, who although made some effort to correct the children, should have made it a priority to specifically teach them that the reason Arthur chose not to leave his home is most likely not complicated or with mal-intent. Oftentimes adults try and shield children away from people who are different or who have disabilities and instead of answering questions they have, they dismiss the conversation and say phrases like “don’t stare just keep walking” which further perpetuates the stigma that people with disabilities are different in a bad way as well as the “us vs. them” superiority mindset.
With all of this in mind, I produced a new idea for my project that I believed could be better told in the form of a painting instead of through a paper which I feared would become redundant. Consequently, my new idea was to create an abstract painting with an alluring background filled with vibrant colors as the focus of the piece and then I wanted to draw small, also abstract-looking, skeletons with different disability labels on them i.e. dyslexia, ADHD, autistic, and aspergers. The purpose of my painting and inclusion of the skeletons is to convey the message that although humans appear to be different on the outside, at our core we are all the same and are all capable of beauty. Additionally, the reason I made the painting abstract is to convey that no one person gets to define what beauty means, but it is more important than labels which is why I spent the majority of my focus on blending colors and adding eye catching, brilliantly colorful shapes. I honestly had no specific plan as to how I was going to create the abstractness look other than I picked the brightest/most aesthetically pleasing colors I had in my possession and just let my brush flow with no true rhyme or reason other than creating something that was soothing to look at. I am very pleased with the final result and I believe it conveys both my original vision and my message- that we are all capable of beauty and labels are insignificant, perfectly.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York :Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.
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 section 2 4/27
Zachary Welsh’s Thoughts on Craig Romkema’s “Perspectives”
I thoroughly enjoyed this poem because I feel like in a way it acts as a kind of “full circle” moment for our class. The poem itself is assigned reading on the last day of our class meeting and it touches on the topics we talked about and discussed all the way back in week one. The poem itself obviously touches on how our society makes individuals with a disability feel isolated or like the “other” and it also touches on labels associated with disabilities. (another thing we talked about in the first few weeks of class) The poem itself not only talks about these topics and provides commentary on them eloquently, but it’s also acting as a test for oursleves and our class as a whole. When we first started taking part in this course, we (or at least I) knew very little about disabilities and the way our society responds to and reacts to them but now we (again maybe it’s just myself) are fully able to pick apart and understand what the author is talking about. We are able to show how we ourselves have grown and gained knowledge on the subject and that’s a beautiful thing.
It has been great getting the chance to share my thoughts with you all while we’ve been in this class together. I’ve not only received a lot of helpful feedback on my posts, but you all made great posts on here as well and it’s been really fun getting the chance to hear your thoughts on the readings we’ve done. I hope you all have a great break and here’s hoping we’ll get another class together.
Until next time 🙂
Shane Mann’s Major Paper Project
Daniella Colón-Cosme’s Major Paper Project
Hypoesthesia: A Close-Reading Analysis of Love in Disability
Enjoy!
Nathalie Navia-Luciano’s Major Paper/Project
Have a good night everyone!
Breakout room 2
Eliana: This book is very diverse in it’s content, like the intentional misgendering of charcters.
Maddie: Yeah, this book and the rest of what we’ve discussed has talked a lot about the intersectionality of disability and it’s relation to sex, gender, and race.
Daniel: The author very intentionally includes discussions on class and other intersectionality, not necessary a full on allegory, but definitely an intentional discussion
Emily (we couldn’t quite understand due to wifi, but was attempting to contribute to the discussion of authors intention.)
Dr. Foss asks us about Aster and leaves
Maddie: Aster is an active demonstration of the societal expectations that her disability prevents her from fulfilling. Theo originally calls her his intellectual superior, in a way of support?, but doesn’t realize the full capability that Aster has
Sonia: People in the book expect Aster and Theo to be romantically involved, but they feel more than friendships, but not whole-heartedly romantic. Theo expects here to define those goals and she just cant.
Maddie: Did you guys think anything about the POV changes, did it work as well in Good Kings Bad Kings?
Sonia: I think it was more distracting, especially since it was in third-person limited 90% of the time. The switching provided different perspectives but the lack of consistency took away from the story.
Eliana: I can see the pros and cons of different povs, but this novel had a lot of characters that all had agency, and the limited pov took away from the agency that they could have had. In terms of disability, the pov can help show how disability plays into the novel
Maddie: The limited third person perspective provides the readers with a thought of what Aster herself is limited to.
Foss: What about the setting?
Daniel: The setting allows us to have some type of reflection on our society. The fact that the futuristic setting, leaving Earth, could demonstrate that we had to leave because we destroyed the Earth. The demonstration of race with Theo shows that not much changed from the past to the future.
Maddie: The movement of humanity to space, but the repetition of the same events could be a representation of that cliche of “repeating the same things over and over again is insanity” which could relate to Dickinson’s piece on Madness. he societal acceptance of their mass madness, but the rejection of what they view as “mad” because it’s different, despite being supposedly “Advanced”
Zachary Welsh’s Thoughts/Questions on “Misfit” by Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Okay so the reading that stood out to me the most this week was actually An Unkindness of Ghosts, but I wanted to write about Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay’s “Misfit” in part because I found it to not only be very intriguing, but also because I found myself struggling to understand what it was saying. Now this of course is not an insult to the author, but rather an admission that I myself am not the best when it comes to decoding the meaning of poetry. That being said, I’d like to offer up what I think the poem is saying. The poem opens with lines essentially stating how the Earth revolves round and round, and from it stars recede, night and day are formed, and nothing goes wrong. However, Mukhopadhyay immediately follows this up with a ferocious contradiction in which he says that when he himself spins round and round, men and women stare and him and they label him a misfit. I believe Mukhopadhyay is using this stark contrast as a way to provide some type of commentary on Autism and how it is perceived by our society. Maybe he is saying that when the world turns round and round, no one bats an eye, but when he turns round and round, he’s suddenly labeled as an outcast? I may be reaching but it’s the best I was able to come up with. This then brings me to the last two stanzas of the poem. Mukhopadhyay turns into the wind after being called a misfit, but I am struggling to understand the significance of it or what it means. The final stanza of the poem leads me to believe that I am at least heading in the right direction, but I can’t say I know for sure.
If anyone is able to clarify the meaning of the poem for me or offer up their interpretation of it, I would love to hear it and I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
