Deej, a documentary that follows you through high school and the very beginning of college, premiered this fall. What do you want the film to accomplish?
I want the film to dispel societal stereotypes and misunderstandings and to promote inclusion—in family, school, employment, and community—for all of us who communicate alternatively. I’ve estimated there are as many as 750,000 nonspeaking autistics in America. The dominant culture’s production of autism is not my experience of autism. As the film’s subject, narrator, and co-producer, I try to unearth the discrepancies between the outsider’s perspective and the nonspeaking autistic person’s private insights.
What does “inclusion” mean to you?
I think you’ll see that, for me, inclusion means having a voice in one’s life. Nonspeaking autistic people rarely—if ever—do. Instead, they’re usually stored away like unwanted furniture.
What is one of the more harmful stereotypes about nonspeaking autistic people?
Our silence makes some estimate us as incapable, and soon we are left out of anything meaningful. Before I learned to read and write, people thought I had no mind.