Autistic People of Color are Right Here!

OUT NOW: 19 JUNE 2017

Buy on CreateSpace or Amazon!

Update (June 2017)

We have finished final formatting on the anthology and are preparing for release at the end of June/beginning of July. Proof copies are in hand, and we are beyond excited for this project’s publication!

Lydia, lead editor

Update (August 2016)

Thank you for your patience as we finalize this anthology. As you know, we intended to publish this April; however, we have run into a number of production delays, which have also been affected by unfortunate circumstances in the personal lives of many of us on the project team, including me. Right now, we are finalizing the formatting and aspects of files necessary for publication before sending to the printer. We currently plan to have the paperback and ebook versions available by the end of August or early September 2016, though it is possible that current delays could extend through the end of September. Stay tuned for details!

Lydia X. Z. Brown

Lead Editor

Update (2 April 2016)

Thank you so much for your support and enthusiastic interest in All the Weight of Our Dreams (the anthology by autistic people of color)! We planned to have the anthology available for purchase as an ebook and in print today, but right now, we’re actually making final adjustments to the manuscript to ensure it will be in the best form possible. Our updated ETA is that the anthology will be available to the public by the end of April (and hopefully very, very soon). For updates, keep checking this website.

Lydia, E., and Morénike

We matter. We invite you to support us in amplifying the voices of autistic people of color.

For those of us who are autistic and racialized, we often struggle to find representation in mass media, academic work about autism or race, and the activist and advocacy movements that focus on autism, neurodiversity, disability rights, or racial justice. Most autism and autistic organizations, publications about autism, and broader neurodiversity campaigns are predominantly white. Yet disabled Black and Brown students are most likely to be impacted by the school to prison pipeline; the vast majority of U.S. prisoners are disabled and Black or Brown; racialized people are a global majority (which means that autistic people of color far outnumber white autistic people in the world); and the combined impact of race and disability severely increase likelihood for hate crimes, police violence, all other forms of abuse, and repeated retraumatization.

Our stories matter and must be told. We hope that this collection will not only speak sharply against our constant erasure and invisibility as (at least) doubly impacted, but will also provide solace and familiarity for our own out there waiting for stories like theirs to be told.

What is this?

All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism

In summer 2014, we announced a new project to compile the first ever anthology of art and writings by autistics of color about our lives, our experiences, our histories, our communities, our struggles, our passions, and our resilience. Our stories deserve to be told both for us and for future generations that will come after us. They are stories of segregation in education; police brutality; families of birth, adoption, and choosing; ableism connected to racism; finding community, making home, survival, and resilience. They are stories of being autistic in a neurotypical world and stories of being racialized in a white-dominant world. Now, we are ready to shake up some foundations.

Who are we?

Project Leads

The Autism Womens Network

The Autism Women’s Network is dedicated to building a supportive community for Autistic women of all ages, our families, friends and allies. AWN is committed to recognizing and celebrating diversity and the many intersectional experiences of Autistic women. AWN welcomes all women, supporters of women, those who have at one time identified as women and non binary gender variant individuals. AWN recognizes and affirms the gender identity of each individual.

Whose work?

Artists, Bloggers, Writers

All the Weight of Our Dreams features work from over sixty contributors from seven different countries.

The collection features new and classic work from activists and community leaders like Kassiane A. Asasumasu, N.I. Nicholson (from the Teselacta Multiverse), Timotheus Gordon Jr., Finn Gardiner, and Emma Rosenthal, alongside desperately needed work from newer voices like kiran foster, Emily Pate, Lucas Vizeu, Jennifer Msumba, and Daniel Au Valencia.

We are also proud to highlight fantastic fiction and poetry from writers like Bijhan Valibeigi, Angel A. McCorkle, Emily Pate, Helene Fischer, Kaijaii Gomez Wick, and Mikael Lee, among many others!

Meet our contributors