Literary Masking and Unmasking: Reading Neuromixed Love Stories from an Autistic Collective Autoethnographic Literary Approach

This article investigates neuromixed love stories in novels that include a named autistic character, are written by autistic authors, or have characters who have been named by paratexts as autistic. In the article, we invoke a collective autoethnographic literary approach, using our reading diaries or letters to each other as source material. From an autistic perspective we explore neurotypical heterosexual neuromixed love stories and autistic counter love stories focusing on how neurotypical and autistic characters are represented. Our main findings are two dichotomies and two happy endings. In neurotypical heterosexual neuromixed love stories, the dichotomy of a female autistic grotesque and the male neurotypical savior is central where the happy ending is curing or masking autism, upholding both heteronormativity and neuronormativity. In autistic counter love stories, the happy ending is rather framed as unmasking and founding a way of life outside of neuro- and heteronormativity for both parties. Community Brief Why is this topic important Autistic people are often told that they can’t communicate their experiences to non-autistic people. A way to counter this assumption is to show that autistic experiences can be communicated from autistic perspectives. What is the purpose of this article? This article looks at love stories between an autistic character and a non-autistic character in novels. The novels include a named autistic character, are written by autistic authors, or have characters with autistic characteristics. It looks at the stories using a collective autoethnographic literary approach. This means the article’s autistic authors wrote reading diaries or letters to each other and then analyzed their own writings. What do the authors suggest? The authors found that the love stories focused on straight, neurotypical relationships as being normal, even when the story’s author was autistic. Female autistic characters acted similar to nonhuman/non-woman monsters. They did not seem to be able to experience normal feelings. Male neurotypical characters acted like “saviors,” who are able to “cure” the female autists, normalizing demands of masking. What do the authors think should happen in the future? The authors think that autistic people need to be represented in different ways in literature. They also think that these autistic characters need to express happy endings and make unmasking a path for autistic happiness. How will this study help autistic people now and in the future? It is important for both autistic and non-autistic readers to be aware of how autistic people are represented in literature. This study brings awareness of a gap in how autistic people are represented in romance stories, which might encourage writers to communicate more nuanced autistic experiences.