Odmowa identyfikacji: o zespoleniu, diagnozie i dostępie. Wokół Wczoraj byłaś zła na zielono Elizy Kąckiej

This article analyzes a recently published memoir entitled Wczoraj byłaś zła na zielono (Yesterday You Were Angry in Green) by Eliza Kącka. The memoir tells the story of raising an autistic child by a nondisabled mother. The article employs disability studies tools to think of the book and examines why the author refrains from using a word “autism” while listing the symptoms and naming the therapies her daughter attends. It argues that the memoir constitutes a continuum of nondisabled mothers’ confessions about raising children with disabilities, and explores the ways in which Kącka grapples with the fundamental concepts of disability studies such as access and diagnosis. For example, it shows how Kącka reformulates the concept of access without identifying a barrier that prevents her from accessing her daughter’s world. In other words, the memoir discusses her longing for access to her daughter’s inner experiences, but does not identify what makes getting access impossible. As such, the memoir departs from more mainstream accounts of autism that depict it as a “thief” or “terrorist” who “steals” children. Moreover, the article considers the author’s approach toward diagnosis and juxtaposes it with autistic people’s experiences of getting autism diagnosis. As a result, the article shows that while mothers’ accounts of living and raising disabled children are crucial for understanding disability in Poland, they cannot be the only source of knowledge about disability.