Literary Masking and Unmasking: Reading Neuromixed Love Stories from an Autistic Collective Autoethnographic Literary Approach

This article investigates neuromixed love stories in novels that include a named autistic character, are written by autistic authors, or have characters who have been named by paratexts as autistic. In the article, we invoke a collective autoethnographic literary approach, using our reading diaries or letters to each other as source material. From an autistic perspective we explore neurotypical heterosexual neuromixed love stories and autistic counter love stories focusing on how neurotypical and autistic characters are represented. Our main findings are two dichotomies and two happy endings. In neurotypical heterosexual neuromixed love stories, the dichotomy of a female autistic grotesque and the male neurotypical savior is central where the happy ending is curing or masking autism, upholding both heteronormativity and neuronormativity. In autistic counter love stories, the happy ending is rather framed as unmasking and founding a way of life outside of neuro- and heteronormativity for both parties.