Welcome to a new entry into the ongoing series exploring popular YA genres, tropes, and themes as seen through the eyes of those writing them. Each guest piece offers insight into a topic that’s beloved–or deserves more attention–in the world of YA, including hallmarks, highlights, and books that exemplify the theme at hand.
Ryan Douglass launched the series with a look at YA retellings and reimaginings. Since then, Carolina Ixta explored activism and hope, Stacey Lee offered up her experiences and insights into Gothic YA, and Diana Ma dove into the popular world of franchise novels (where were Power Rangers YA books like hers when I was a kid?). We’ve heard from Kody Keplinger on the enduring popularity of books about cults, Kit Rosewater on queer histories and futures in YA, and Huda Fahmy on fictionalized graphic memoirs.
I’m excited to welcome rising YA star Andrew Joseph White’s entry into the series. White’s latest book, You’re No Better, hit shelves recently. The story centers 17-year-old Morgan, a trans boy with autism, who was responsible for putting his serial killer father in jail–and who everyone believes will follow that same road. It’s a thriller about confronting the past to have a future and features White’s signature knack for compelling and absorbing horror writing.
With better–though still deeply misunderstood–discussions around autism culturally and with more autistic authors and stories centering those experiences publish in young adult literature, it felt like a prime opportunity to invite White to talk about what makes good autistic representation. Get ready to add some great book recommendations for your TBR!
Andrew Joseph White on Autistic Representation in YA
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If you are at all familiar with autism and common autistic traits, you are probably familiar with the concept of “black and white thinking.” This essentially means to think in extremes: black and white, wrong or right, all or nothing. Grey areas, then, become difficult. In my experience, navigating nuance and unclear circumstances are my kryptonite. I’m garbage with subtext, both in literature and in everyday social situations. My routines (such as my deeply inefficient process for editing a manuscript) are rigid and inflexible because one minor deviation can make the whole thing wrong.
This kind of thinking also contributes to a very literal way of approaching the world. I take things at face value and often fail to extrapolate based on given information. This is especially true when it comes to my own experiences. I couldn’t recognize my gender dysphoria for nearly two decades because I didn’t fit the “societal script” of what a trans person was.
So the idea I might have a developmental disability like autism? It was completely off the table. For so long, I never considered it, even if my parents spent my elementary years mulling over the possibility. To me, I couldn’t be autistic; I was just odd. Ignore the fact that I have noticeable challenges with hygiene, and sensory sensitives, and relationships, and basic communication, and couldn’t manage any of those things without support from my family or extreme frustration followed by utter burnout.
Spoiler alert: I am. It’s just that my black and white thinking led me to take the predominant social narrative of what “autism” looks like—for example, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory—as the only possible story.
I believe if I’d had access to more stories about autistic people, more representation that wasn’t “look at this awkward/childish/savant-esque man-boy and laugh at/be hollowly inspired by/pity him,” I could have realized what was happening, and asked for help, much sooner than I did. So while I have a lot of reasons for writing the books I do, this is one of them: I am reaching out a hand. This is what it’s like for me. Is this what it’s like for you, too? If writing about my experiences helps just one person, then I’ve done well.
In the spirit of the above, here is a collection of books I wish I’d had as a teenager. As a heavily masking, deeply reserved kid with an extremely rigid understanding of the world (and myself), these are just a few YA novels that might have nudged me in the right direction if they’d existed back then. And some day in the future, I hope there will be so many stories by autistic people about us, from authors with all kinds of symptoms and support needs, from all kinds of communities and backgrounds, that nobody else is ever left confused or lonely again.
Tonight We Rule the World by Zack Smedley
Genuinely one of my favorite contemporary YA novels of all time. This book follows Owen, an autistic and bisexual boy, and all the important people in his life after his school finds out he was assaulted on a field trip. A deeply compassionate portrayal of a queer autistic teen doing his best to hold it together, no matter how devastating it gets, and a story that would’ve deeply resonated with teenage me.
Unseelie by Ivelisse Housman
I almost exclusively read speculative fiction when I was younger, so an autistic protagonist in a fantasy novel would have been revolutionary in high school. Featuring twin sisters searching for a fabled treasure, it also touches on the idea of the changeling myth when it comes to autism—that “changelings” might have been a way for people to explain developmental disabilities in their children.
Something More by Jackie Khalilieh
This book is an adorable love triangle centering a young Palestinian-Canadian, autistic teen. There is just something about autistic romance that delights even me, the most avid of horror fans: the reminder that we love and are loved, can want and be wanted. Seeing traits that, in myself, I considered frustrating or “bad,” and watching them be accepted wholeheartedly in a story, would have done wonders for me.
The Luis Ortega Survival Club by Sonido Reyes
Last but certainly not least, we have a book about autistic revenge. After a girl who never speaks is taken advantage of by a popular boy, she meets a group of students aiming to expose that boy as a predator. Not only would I have adored the mutism rep, but there is something so refreshing about an autistic teen getting to be angry, and taking back control, and finding real kindness and community along the way.
Andrew Joseph White is the bestselling author of horror fiction for both teens and adults, including Hell Followed With Us, You Weren’t Meant to Be Human, and more. He was born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley, and received his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. He lives in Virginia with his wife and their cranky cat.
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