Autism Vox

Orientalism in Portia Iversen’s Strange Son

by Kristina Chew, PhD on January 13th, 2007

CAN co-founded Portia Iversen’s recently published book Strange Son is subtitled “Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism.” The two sons are Iversen’s own autistic son, now adolescent son, Dov, and Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, who, while “severely” autistic (as Iversen continually stresses), is able to communicate by writing and who is a published poet and author of The Mind Tree: A Miraculous Child Breaks the Silence of Autism (2000; 2003). Tito was taught by his mother, Soma Mukhophadyay, who taught Tito to communicate by pointing to letters on a piece of cardboard in what she calls her Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). The other mother is, of course, Iversen herself and from the subtitle, a reader might think that these two mothers, and these two autistic sons, are a sort of fantastic four all on a mission, a “quest,” to discover “what autism is.”

A reader of Strange Son quickly notes, though, that Iversen’s voice is dominant throughout the book. Written in the first-person, Strange Son can be seen as very much, if not primarily, Iversen’s own story of her “quest” to understand autism. Iversen presents herself as a “mom on a mission” to find the answers to autism. Though the book’s cast of characters includes a veritable laundry list of researchers on autism (Eric Courchesne, Vilayanus Ramachandran), the main discoveries about autism are all expressed as those of Iversen.

“A strange concept was beginning to form in my mind: Had learning to spell words, construct sentences, and build stories actually Tito how to think?” (p. 102)

“Attention shifting in high-functioning autistics was the focus of [Courchesne]’s current research but I knew that Tito would not be a suitable canditate for this type of testing because his sensory abnormalities were so profound.” (p. 163)

“….I knew that seeing Tito’s behavior made the beauty and depth of his poems all the more startling.” (p. 173)

“I wondered at what point in the early development these arousal abnormalities began in these children…………Could early detection and treatment of abnormal arousal precent an infant from going off the developmental track, maybe even avoiding autism altogether? And how does abnormal autonomic arousal contribute in autism? Is it cause or effect? These are the questions that ran through my mind and still do. (p. 207)

Iversen’s is the mind that puts together the pieces of scientific research and what Tito tells her (especially through long emails, indicated by italics in the text). Of course, Strange Son is Iversen’s memoir, and so her story of how she came to make certain discoveries, as she writes, about “what autism is.” She is the protagonist, the moving force, behind the narrative of Strange Son and what I wish to do here is to consider how Iversen represents the other figures of her book’s subtitle, Soma, Tito, and Dov.

Iversen’s representation of Soma and Tito, who emigrate from India thanks to Iversen’s efforts and the funding of CAN, is heavily tinged with what the late Columbia University literary scholar Edward Said called Orientalism. In his 1978 book Orientalism, Said argued that, from the beginnings of the West among the ancient Greeks, Europeans have seen the East—the Orient”—-as a mysterious “other,” alien, threatening, and dangerous. According to Said, the West has constantly constructed—represented—the East (and particularly the Middle East) as exotic and strange, to use a word from Iversen’s title. The Orient itself, though, has not been able to represent itself—-to speak for itself; it is constantly silent, and speaks only through the West.

Said’s ideas about Orientalism and its role in shaping European imperialism have come under serious critique (see How Edward Said took intellectuals for a ride by Gary Kamiya in the December 6th, 2006 Salon). Nonetheless, Said’s basic premise of the exoticizing representation of the East in the works of Western writers, still has its uses in understanding how people from the West not only describe the East and those from “the Orient”—from Asia—as mysterious and “other,” as those who possess a hidden and deep knowledge.

And it is just such an Orientalist view that can be seen in Iversen’s portrayal of Soma and Tito, and of the other Asian figures in Strange Son. In Chapter 9, “Four Minus One,” Iversen takes Soma and Tito to a “downscale mall” (p. 156):

To commemorate the experience, I took Soma and Tito’s picture on the landing by the escalator, in front of a giant clay vessel filled with artificial reeds, a mockoff of ancient Egypt. How or why ancient Egypt related to this scrappy little mall was beyond my imagination. Soma stood as tall and proud as anyone under five feet ever could, smiling demurely in her flowing aubergine-colored sari with gold-embroidered edges as she wound a small arm around her large son. Tito’s head was turned away from his mother, as he stared upward, transcending the inconsequential architecture, staring up through clouds, out into the cool expanse of the universe. An unexpected shaft of sunlight suddenly illuminated Tito’s profile, his fish-shaped eyes, his aquiline nose, and stoic smile, and he was transformed into the majestic head of a pharaoh. I snapped my photo. (p. 157)

Iversen’s describes the mall—it has a “knockoff” of the great monuments of ancient Egypt and “inconsequential architecture,” it is “scrappy”—-as mundane and ordinary; Tito, in constrast, “transformed” by a mere beam of sunlight, is an authentic Easterner—-is comparable to a pharaoh himself. Soma, too, for all her small size (not, I must note, to this writer, as I am also five feet tall) stands out with a purple—Iversen uses a more elaborate word, “aubergine”—sari that is “flowing,” like the robes of a queen. The notion of Soma and Tito as royalty—as autism royalty under the careful watch of Iversen—-is further suggested by the use of the words “aquiline” and majestic.

I will continue to explore the Orientalist representation of Soma and Tito in Iversen’s Strange Son in future posts.

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POSTED IN: Asia, Autism Lit, Books, India, Race & Ethnicity, Stereotypes