For Levi
By Joshua Bennett

In 1851, a physician named Dr. Samuel Cartwright coined the term “drapetomania”

A disease characterized by the following symptoms: 
“It creates within the Negro an uncontrollable desire to escape.
It is a disease firmly bound to freedom.”

When I read about Dr.  Cartwright, my mind sets sail towards the face of my younger brother.

Ten years ago, a neurologist cast the word “autism” like a giant fishing net over his brain.
And took the entire family under the tide with it.

The doctors never used the word “gift’.
Never thought to suggest that maybe my Levi’s words aren’t rusty anchors like the rest of ours.
They’re jellyfish.
You think you can see right through them,
but it’s because you’re too fixated on the surface.

They keep telling him to think like an assembly line, but

His mind is more like the world’s most extravagant circus

all trapeze and lion teeth, drum beat and riotous laughter

That could shake the moon out of its skin.

Every sentence a staccato hymn
in the midst of a world that has forgotten how to value silence.

When did the brain become an appliance?
When did we start doing Dr. Cartwright’s work for him?

Turning our children in to chattel

And our schools into asylums where we medicate based on myth

This is not just about my younger brother,

It’s about our obsession with normalcy
And the wars we have waged in its name.

Christopher Baker, a boy from Lexington, Kentucky—
his teacher stuffed him in a duffel bag

and left him there for twenty minutes.

A flailing albatros, desperate for sky
When his mother burst through the classroom doors
I could just picture his name
Falling like a tiny revolution from her mouth

And overturning the silence that had conquered the room.

Levi
they will come for you too.
They will tell you to laugh and lift and work on cue
If you can’t muster the emotion, then just fake it like all the other good robots do.

be human.

be like me.

Be a social butterfly with gendernormative wings.

Smile big. Smile pretty.
Be quarterback, point guard, catcall, courageous
Be bicep and jackhammer spark
Call the pretty girls ugly
and mean it with all of your heart.

Your scribbles are just scribbles, Levi;
Don’t dare call them art. Don’t dare be enigma.

There is no space for your kind of beautiful here.

No room for those Harriet-Tubman-Nat-Turner-type visions
spinning shackles into vapor.

We have seen what can happen when a mind goes unchained.

We have built entire industries around keeping our modern-day Michelangelo’s in check.

How many children?

How many masterfully written lives must be dashed into the ground before we can call this a genocide on creativity?

Stop calling my little brother diseased.

He’s not sick.
His mind is just an unmapped archipelago
Where every idea a former slave gone free

So the next time they tell you

that your neurons are a crime, little brother,
tell them this, for me:
Tell them that Levi
is just shorthand for
levitate.

That your calling is to the clouds

And you would pay them a lot more attention,

but you are simply too busy

having a conversation
with God right now.

Then smile for them.

Smile big.  Smile pretty.

Teach their wounded souls how to fly

Because you were made that way.

—a genius with jellyfish for words,
a divine poem destined for the sky—


—Joshua Bennett

Faith Jegede: What I've learned from my autistic brothers

Today I have just one request. Please don't tell me I'm normal.

00:22 Now I'd like to introduce you to my brothers. Remi is 22, tall and very handsome. He's speechless, but he communicates joy in a way that some of the best orators cannot. Remi knows what love is. He shares it unconditionally and he shares it regardless. He's not greedy. He doesn't see skin color. He doesn't care about religious differences, and get this: He has never told a lie. When he sings songs from our childhood, attempting words that not even I could remember, he reminds me of one thing: how little we know about the mind, and how wonderful the unknown must be.

01:11 Samuel is 16. He's tall. He's very handsome. He has the most impeccable memory. He has a selective one, though. He doesn't remember if he stole my chocolate bar, but he remembers the year of release for every song on my iPod, conversations we had when he was four, weeing on my arm on the first ever episode of Teletubbies, and Lady Gaga's birthday.

01:39 Don't they sound incredible? But most people don't agree. And in fact, because their minds don't fit into society's version of normal, they're often bypassed and misunderstood.

01:53 But what lifted my heart and strengthened my soul was that even though this was the case, although they were not seen as ordinary, this could only mean one thing: that they were extraordinary -- autistic and extraordinary.

02:12 Now, for you who may be less familiar with the term "autism," it's a complex brain disorder that affects social communication, learning and sometimes physical skills. It manifests in each individual differently,hence why Remi is so different from Sam. And across the world, every 20 minutes, one new person is diagnosed with autism, and although it's one of the fastest-growing developmental disorders in the world, there is no known cause or cure.

02:42 And I cannot remember the first moment I encountered autism, but I cannot recall a day without it. I was just three years old when my brother came along, and I was so excited that I had a new being in my life.And after a few months went by, I realized that he was different. He screamed a lot. He didn't want to play like the other babies did, and in fact, he didn't seem very interested in me whatsoever. Remi lived and reigned in his own world, with his own rules, and he found pleasure in the smallest things, like lining up cars around the room and staring at the washing machine and eating anything that came in between.And as he grew older, he grew more different, and the differences became more obvious. Yet beyond the tantrums and the frustration and the never-ending hyperactivity was something really unique: a pure and innocent nature, a boy who saw the world without prejudice, a human who had never lied. Extraordinary.

03:53 Now, I cannot deny that there have been some challenging moments in my family, moments where I've wished that they were just like me. But I cast my mind back to the things that they've taught me about individuality and communication and love, and I realize that these are things that I wouldn't want to change with normality. Normality overlooks the beauty that differences give us, and the fact that we are different doesn't mean that one of us is wrong. It just means that there's a different kind of right. And if I could communicate just one thing to Remi and to Sam and to you, it would be that you don't have to be normal. You can be extraordinary. Because autistic or not, the differences that we have -- We've got a gift! Everyone's got a gift inside of us, and in all honesty, the pursuit of normality is the ultimate sacrifice of potential. The chance for greatness, for progress and for change dies the moment we try to be like someone else.

05:06 Please -- don't tell me I'm normal. Thank you.