Book Review: Living in Two Worlds (Dylan Emmons)

Reviewed by Michael Northen

With the emergence of disability rights, particularly post ADA, there has been a huge push for, in Simi Linton's words, claiming disability. Disability has come to be seen as an identity, much as race, ethnicity or gender. In their recent book, Disability and Passing, Jeffrey Brune and Daniel J. Wilson present a collection of essays that take a look at the notion of passing from various views within the disability community. While a nuanced collection, the writers as a whole are in agreement that attempting to hide a disability or to " pass" in the main is counterproductive to the efforts of disability rights as a whole. The one article that dissents from this general perspective is Alison Carey's "The Sociological Contexts of Passing and Intellectual Disability." Carey points out that despite the rise in disability pride, there are still many reasons to hide an intellectual disability.

Perhaps nowhere is this issue more problematic than for individuals on the autism spectrum. In some cases, hiding an intellectual disability is not an option. In his memoir Plankton Dreams (2016), Tito Mukhopadhyay describes his attempts to thwart the efforts of his neurotypical special education teachers to channel him into the curricular pablum that was deemed appropriate for him. Given the impossibility of avoiding being labeled by even the most casual observer, Mukhopadhyay refused attempts to normalize him. In contrast, those on the spectrum who have been diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome face a different situation. In most cases, what they wish for most is that their diagnosis, with all of its symptoms, would simply vanish. Dylan Emmon's Living in Two Worlds, subtitled On Being a Social Chameleon with Asperger's presents a case for this view.

Living in Two Worlds has a dual agenda. The first is pedagogical. Part 1 of the book describes a scene in which Emmons and his mother are giving a workshop called " Growing Up With Asperger's" conducted through a power point presentation. While his mother gives the perspective of someone who has seen the entire process from the beginning and had to play the role of the advocate, Dylan relates the internal experience of growing up with Asperger's. When he was diagnosed at the age of six, his parents were told, by the doctor, "I am guardedly hopeful that Dylan will lead a semi-independent life as an adult, but that remains to be seen." At the writing of the book Emmons is an adjunct professor of English at Westchester Community College in New York. The point of the presentation to this group of parents and others interested in autism is to provide a trajectory about which they can feel positive.

Structurally, Living in Two Worlds scaffolds to the power point presentation in which Emmons previously participated. The book is broken into three parts following the elementary, middle school and high school years of the author's education, bookended by comments about transitioning between two worlds. Within each section are a collage of scenarios illustrating his experiences during that time period.

The second motive for the book is really to validate the progress that Emmons has made. The memoir opens with the sentence, "A friend of mine…recently told me, I don't think you have Asperger's; I think its all in your head." As Emmons points out, for all the outward progress he has made, the fact that others don't see the daily struggles does not mean that they do not continue. It is one of the ironies of normalization that the more successful a person is, the less they tend to be credited for what they have accomplished. Having said that, however, it will be a rare reader who does not start self-diagnosing when they realize that a number of the experiences that Emmons relates are surprising like their own.

One of these frequently experienced tendencies is the impulse to interrupt. Emmons illustrates this with a situation when, in elementary school he heard someone spelling the word pizza incorrectly as they typed and was not able to keep from correcting her. Anticipating the readers response to his illustration, Emmons writes:

There's a difference between " I won't" and " I can't". The misconception is that people with disabilities like mine are simply being difficult when we don't follow directions exactly. A teacher might ridicule me for not paying attention in class or for speaking out of turn or for disrupting. …But the fact is that at the time may be I was incapable of paying attention rather than being unwilling to.

It is to convince readers that both the issues experienced by a person with Asperger's and the capacity for becoming adjusted to conventions of social behavior (if never entirely comfortable with them) are real that Emmons has laid out his story.

If the book's title sounds like a bit of overkill, it nevertheless points to the memoir's main theme: someone who's behavior leads them to be classified as having a disability can transition to a life in which their condition is no longer observable. One of the classic attributes of a person on the autism scale – as the film Rainman so dramatically thrust into the public arena – is the need to follow ritual and the difficulty in adjusting to change. The particular problem that this poses for people with Asperger's is that while they crave consistency and structure, they are not always able to pick up on what those structures are in the social arena and, as a result, are labeled as people who flaunt rules. Early in his school career, Emmons realized that despite wanting friends and wanting to fit in, he was never quite able to and, as many who find themselves on the outside of convention do, he embraced his position as an outsider.

While he always wanted to excel in school, Emmons at the same time aligned himself with those who set themselves against society's norms. Unable to fit in with the conventionally popular kids, he began adopting the clothing, music, sense of humor and attitudes of those who saw themselves as outsiders. It is in this sense that Emmons finds himself in two worlds, the world of convention (in which he cannot quite fit) and the world of the fringe, which is unnatural to him but appears more willing to accept him. In one of the most insightful passages in the book Emmons admits:

I tried to use every minute of heavy music to work in me, transform me into someone better, edgier, unafraid to stand out. Yes, it was starting to dawn on me that I stood out and not always in a good way. My brand of humor commanded me to commit small eyebrow-raising acts of social suicide such as screaming , …I'll eat you alive!… in the middle of a Spanish class (to be fair, it was a line from a Limp Bizkit song). I had yet to understand a crucial bit of humor, of writing, of human experience: other people crave context. That my mind had made some vague connection between what was happening in conversation and that song lyric wasn't enough for my classmates.

The closing of this gap is the vanishing point towards which the book's narrative moves.

One of the issues that inevitably sits in the background for a person with a disability who is able to pass is how they view themselves in relationship to other people with disabilities who can not. In several poems in her book Geode, poet Ona Gritz grapples with the denial of her association with other people who have cerebal palsy, when she herself can pass as "normal". There is only one place in Emmons book where he makes room for this issue. He describes being at a square dance where he was paired up with a girl named Marissa and comments, "I had to sit back and take it whenever they [my friends] decided to tell anyone within earshot that I dance with retarded girls." This would have been a great opportunity to point out to readers that even within the disabilities community itself there is a social hierarchy, and explore the implications of that for someone in his position. Unfortunately, Emmons passes the opportunity up. He probably does not help his cause any when he adds, "I don't know if I should feel worse for myself or for the disabled girls themselves."

Jessica Kinglsey Publishers, who produced the book, has put out a number of publications on autism, many of which like Living in Two Worlds, appear to be written to educate people about the experience of living with disability. From that point of view, the book accomplishes its goals. Just who the writer's intended audience is, however, is a bit unclear. The narrative essentially ends at the point where Emmons is ready to graduate from high school and one of the strengths of the book is that it can be read, understood and likely related to by high school-aged readers. Unfortunately, that is also part of it's weakness. The book carries with it the feeling that the author is still too close in time to the events that he is narrating, and that he is not able to create the emotional distance needed for a more nuanced perspective. At times, one feels that the hurts and grudges from middle school and high school are still too real. This is hardly surprising, since, as Emmons notes, he graduated from high school in 2008. One wonders if this is a book that would have benefitted from the author's having waited a few years to write. That said, it is one of the few memoirs written by someone who knows what it is like to have lived with a diagnosis of Alsperger's syndrome. Because of that inside view, it deserves a read.

Title: Living in Two Worlds
Author: Dylan Emmons
Publisher: Jessica Kinglsey Publishers
Publication Date: 2016

 

Michael Northen is the editor of Wordgathering and an editor with Jennifer Bartlett and Sheila Black of the anthology Beauty is a Verb: the New Poetry of Disability. He is also a co-editor of the upcoming anthology of disabiity short fiction, The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked (Cinco Puntos Press) to be released in November 2016.