“Think Straight”

Disability readings of Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted (1993) have so far focused on the challenges the memoir offers to psychiatric authority, as well as the author’s subversion or rejection of her own BPD diagnosis. However, the article argues that a neuroqueer feminist reading of the text, which redirects attention towards the physical body, reveals variations in embodied knowing that foster a nuanced, non-medicalized understanding of neurodiverse sexuality and self-injury. In addressing these areas of critical neglect, the article aligns the memoir with Pamela Moss’s concept of “perching” (2016), arguing that Kaysen criticizes BPD’s authorization of an unjustly gendered form of discrimination while simultaneously demonstrating its value in structuring a particular kind of emotional pain. Her strategic identification with certain BPD symptoms, and her disidentification with their sexist implications, functions to destigmatize BPD through a provocative narrative stance that prioritizes metaphorical framing and images of disgust. Ultimately, the analysis explores Kaysen’s efforts to assert the right of the neurodiverse woman to exist as both a sexual and a rhetorical agent.