William Carroll (they/them) & Jane Tolmie (she/her)
“Perfectly You”: On Indigenous Sci-Fi, Making Space for
Neurodiversity, and Lack of Closure
David A. Robertson’s story “Perfectly You” appears in this collection.
© 2016 Bedside Press
Edited by Hope Nicholson
Cover image by Jeffrey Veregge
David A. Robertson’s biography and webpage:
In our project, William and I chose to explore a short story by David A. Robertson, a member of Norway House Cree Nation, “Perfectly You, ” as a teaching tool for the two of us together, learning around three different areas:
One alternative to damage-centered research is to craft our research to capture desire instead of damage. I submit that a desire-based framework is an antidote to damage-centered research. An antidote stops and counteracts the effects of a poison, and the poison I am referring to here is not the supposed damage of Native communities, urban communities, or other disenfranchised communities but the frameworks that position these communities as damaged. (Tuck 416)
Eve Tuck. “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities.”
Harvard Educational Review Vol. 79 No. 3 Fall 2009
Copyright © by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
We can live in a world where millions of uniquely talented but quirky people are left to suffer massive underemployment and ostracism, while masking who they really are, and perhaps getting by through government assistance. Or we can proactively support the actualization of human potential for everyone, reaping the benefits of a wellspring of creativity and new perspectives that could open the door to untold future innovations, better hedging against groupthink, and the knowledge that millions of would be-outcasts have been accepted into the fold, finding a productive and self-affirming place in the fabric of our culture and economy. (Dunne, 9)
Maureen Dunne. The Neurodiversity Edge: The Essential Guide to Embracing Autism, ADHD, Dyspexia, and Other Neurologoical Differences for Any Organization. Hoboken: ©John Wiley & Sons, 2024.
In her introduction to The Neurodiversity Edge, cognitive scientist Dr. Maureen Dunne considers built-in biases, social scripts, and institutional standards, and argues for a neurodiversity paradigm, and a mission, that can be couched “within an actionable framework for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI),” offering this challenge:
I want to signal that something interesting is going on beyond the colonial gaze. At the same time, by using dominant culture vernacular, I want to show that what happens in these spaces is very like what happens in similar spaces but with different people. While the core of Indigeneity is incompletely available to non-Native people, those who come to spaces of conciliation not to repair “Indians” but to heal themselves, who come not as colonizers but with a conciliatory attitude to learn and share as equals, may be transformed. (Garneau, 39)
David Garneau. “Chapter 1: Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation.” Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action In and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Ed. Dylan Robinson, Keavy Martin. ©Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2016.
David Garneau writes about art within his discussion of what he calls possibilities for “Living Apology,” in Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation, arguing for ongoing conciliation, in which non-Indigenous people consider privilege and work toward non-colonial practices :
The plot of the story:
Emma, who is Cree, goes to a medical office, where she tells a psychiatrist about meeting Cassie once at a coffee shop, someone she really liked but never called. Emma arranges for a medically-induced “dream” to see Cassie again. She goes to a “similar” room, or maybe the same room, for the dream. Things seem to go wrong, with screaming, and Emma waking up 68 years later. But Cassie has visited her in hospital, in her coma. Cassie also had a wife, who has died of old age when Cassie finally talks to an awake Emma. Emma dies of old age, with Cassie, who has learned some Cree words, there in the room.
In fact, the ‘real’ experiment starts at 10:34 and ends at 10:36. Emma is fine. She still does not call Cassie.
Preliminary Thoughts:
The story depends on lack of closure, lack of genuine human interaction, and a photograph of Cassie, which Emma described to her as “perfectly you.” The fantasy of queer love remains a fantasy. Authenticity remains a fantasy. Spatially, visually, and in terms of action, the story is very limited, with the main focus a hospital-like room, or two rooms. �
So this is the stock image – and this one is a stock image – that we as readers are given to work with for the whole short story. William Carroll offers others, starting with the next slide, with their art next to parts of the story.
Title: “Talking Head”
“Is that a cultural trait?”
“Huh?”
“Scaling trees.” Dr. Samuels checked his extensive notes, perusing what he’d written a few pages back. “You told me you were…Cree.”
“I mean, I was being facetious, but that’s kinda ignorant.”
(. . . ) She decided that from here on in she would robotically answer the man, and he could shove the pen up his ass. (39)
“The Interview”
“Would you have sat there if there was, say, an older gentleman there?”
“You mean a man.”
“I mean an older person.”
“I don’t know. I don’t have to imagine other scenarios. She was there.” (40)
“Isekai”
“It might’ve been the same room, for all she knew.” (41)
“Stationary”
“Someone entered the room from Emma’s left, and she struggled to move her head to face that direction.” (45)
“Spirited Away”
“As she scanned the room, she couldn’t help but notice that, here in the future, nothing seemed like it belonged in a sci-fi movie (. . . )
“What’s different now?”
(…) “Not much. Not really. We’re still waiting for our flying cars, you know… a little hotter, maybe.” (47)
“Idyllic”
For the next few weeks, Emma was happy to see Cassie every day. (. . . )
She’d said that she, like Emma, hadn’t anybody left. Her wife had died years earlier. (50)
“La Douleur Exquise”
“I loved you so much when we met. I kept thinking how much it would hurt if I lost you, if I only kept loving you more.” (51)
“The Wake-Up Call”
One day, the phone number would rub off. But that didn’t matter.
She’d memorized it, and would never forget it. (53)
“Idealized Reality”
Indigenous Futurism(s)
This phrase was coined by Anishinaabe professor Grace Dillon in the Indigenous science fiction anthology Walking the Clouds.
In this anthology, Dillon states that all Indigenous Futurisms “involve discovering how personally one is affected by colonization, discarding the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovering ancestral traditions in order to adapt in our post–Native Apocalypse world.”
Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction. Edited by Grace Dillon. © 2012 University of Arizona Press.
Secondary Analysis of Plot
Returning to the story a final time, William and I would like to move past damage to desire by getting rid of the phrase lack of closure, and replacing it with making space for possibility. For a futurity of difference, of non-compliance with expectations, of finding one’s true self, and of making space for others’ true selves in the classroom and elsewhere. This shift from lack to possibility is one from damage or insufficiency to desire, is a celebration of Emma as resistant subject, who does not perform to expectations, who thinks the doctor should shove his pen up his ass.
She does not present as expected, she does not call Cassie, and that is her choice. We as readers can resist using the word should. The lack of classic closure is a presence of something else, of a self-knowing, resistant human being, finding herself in her own way.
We as readers need to become comfortable with her choice, to be herself, to be authentic, to resist expectations. The story takes its title from the photo of someone else, of Cassie, but it is Emma who reaches out to an audience that wants to know more about being perfectly oneself. Emma can serve for us here, too, as a teaching tool around self-knowledge and authenticity.
So with universities like Queens, they recognize your IEP for a certain amount of time after you left high school. And I think it's five years. Once it goes beyond that, they consider it expired for lack of a better word (…) and kind of like the restrictive nature of academia where it’s (…) another gatekeeping barrier.
(William Carroll interview with Jane Tolmie, transcript)
William Carroll remembers high school, where they did art as their Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM), as a place where “no one seemed to listen to me.” They add that “a lot of my IEP stuff was very positive” but they note that for applications to university, they would need a new IEP:
“Visualized Experience”
Because autism is a neurological developmental disability and not just like a mental health disorder, it's almost impossible for me to separate being autistic from who I am as an individual because we are our brains.
(William Carroll interview with Jane Tolmie, transcript)