What to Say Next

The characterization and representation of autism of all time. /s

I'm just going to get right into it- I had so many problems with this book. Way too many problems, problems that shouldn't exist in the first place. Julie Buxbaum has written a very ableist and ignorant portrayal of autism in the form of David Drucker, one of the two main protagonists in What To Say Next. If you have seen my review on Serena Kaylor's ‘Long Story Short', then you know how much I take autistic and neurodivergent portrayals in media seriously as an autistic person. What To Say Next was highly disappointing (and somewhat disturbing), to say the least.

Trigger Warnings Beyond This Point: Discussions of ableism, bullying, discrimination, stalking, racism, reverse racism, mentions of anti-semitism, death, grief, depression. It's going to be very ranty and all-over-the-place. /srs

Some Of The Problems I Had With ‘What To Say Next' As An Autistic Person:

• David tells us in the first chapter that he doesn't believe he is autistic in an ablephobic way... despite portraying multiple of the widest-known stereotypes of autism.
• David/Buxbaum uses labels such as Asperger's and high-functioning, the former of which is rooted in anti-semitism as the doctor who named Asperger's (after himself) was a Nazi and killed autistic people. The fact that it's not in the DSM anymore is acknowledged, and yet the term is still used. The latter is considered ableist and autistic people have been urging for neurotypicals to stop using functioning labels.
• David is a stalker, and he tries to blame it on his neurodivergency and that he's bad with names. He even comments on Kit and her friends' “larger than average breasts” in his notebook.

And everything listed above is all in the first chapter alone.

David forms an unlikely friendship with a semi-popular girl Kit Lowell (the other main protagonist), who is suffering from grief and depression after her dad's passing, and he agrees to help her investigate the car accident that killed him (which is barely addressed afterward). He is bullied throughout the story, notably by two neurotypical classmates named Justin and Gabriel. They call him slurs and go as far as to steal his notebook and post the contents on a site called “The [...] Guide To Mapleview,” leading to further discrimination by his community. Kit must become his neurotypical knight in shining armor to defend him and his honor multiple times, because apparently autistic people need neurotypicals to stand up for us. (How do you decide to write a book about an autistic main character and wind up using him as a plot point to glorify neurotypicals? Like c'mon.) Buxbaum begins to close out this book with revealing that David's guitar teacher is actually a social skills tutor and that his newfound “popularity” is the perfect excuse for him to start masking his autistic traits. Kit and David go to sensory hell a party, they kiss. Everything falls apart again, everything gets solved, the end.

So what is the end-goal message here? That autistic people can defend themselves physically but not verbally unless we have a neurotypical to do it for us? That the “good ending” for autistic people is to mask our autism? This book left such a sour taste in my mouth, then I look at my friends four and five-star reviews of this book and ask myself, “Did we read the same novel?

I wanted to note two quick things; First, that I was uncomfortable with Buxbaum's usage of the r-slur. As she confirms she is not autistic and is in fact an “ally” in her acknowledgments, the word is not hers to reclaim and use even if she is attempting to use it in a sensitive or educational way (which I am not even sure about). Either way, it is extremely disrespectful.

The second thing I wanted to note is Buxbaum writing Kit's Indian grandparents as “racist towards white people.” There is no such thing as reverse racism, period. However, I'm not Indian so I do not believe I am the person to speak any more on the topic.

So I ask, when will neurotypical authors stop portraying us all as Sheldon Cooper? Buxbaum even says in her author's note that “there is a famous expression that when you meet one person with autism, you meet one person with autism” (a statement that is ableist in itself, but that's a whole other topic). However, despite saying this, she proceeds to write David as the most ignorant neurotypical view of autism- highly intelligent and obsessive, seen as weird/outcasted by peers, and tends to be very blunt with his words. While these are traits some autistic people may have, they are also the most commonly-seen traits by neurotypical individuals and used in their portrayals of autism, effectively turning autistic characters into ‘weirdos', ‘creeps' and thus making these the defining characteristics of autism in society's eyes. While I understand Buxbaum trying to say that every autistic person is different, it would've helped if she had made David more than just a one-dimensional view of autism as a whole.

Then, Buxbaum clearly writes that masked autism is the “good ending” of the story. Autistic people have said it before and will say it again- unmasking our autism is the end goal. Not masking, not unmasking and re-masking, just unmasking when you're in a safe place to do so. Buxbaum, as a neurotypical, clearly wrote David's character development as from an autistic boy to a neurotypical-presenting masked autistic boy. It's such a weird way to end your book after campaigning so much for David to be accepted by his peers for who he is.

Despite how much I enjoyed Buxbaum's former novel, ‘Tell Me Three Things', I will likely not be reading any other works by her. In her acknowledgments, she states that she is “still learning [about the autism spectrum and how to be an ally],” and I can only hope that she can recognize her mistakes and decides to learn and grow from them.

TL;DR: This book is proof of why neurotypicals, or “allies” as Buxbaum calls herself, should not write fictional books about autistic or neurodivergent people without proper research and care. And maybe having an actual autistic person read your book before you send it off to publication.