Author Archives: dawnjoyleong

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About dawnjoyleong

Autistic. Researcher. Multi-Artist. Embarking now on completing memoir-fantasie, "Wake Up in My Dreams", a multimedia cross-disciplinary autobiography in the form of Fantasia, in honour and loving memory of Lucy Like-a-Charm.

PhD Dissertation 2016

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I finally uploaded it here.

Scheherazade’s Sea: autism, parallel embodiment and elemental empathy. 2016

It’s been sitting there in the bowels of my external storage drive since 2016. I am very proud of this work – not merely because I won the top award to be won among postgraduates, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Research 2016, but much more because of the way I survived the odds with Lucy’s help and that of my loyal friends, and my one and only amazing sister (and her wonderful hubby). It is a team effort of grit, will, faith and a lot of sand in the mouth. It is a testament to me of the beauty of love and friendship.

As the final chapter will tell, the work has been the best thing to happen to me. I waited and longer for this all my life, and it is a dream come true. (The PhD journey – not the Dean’s Award, I never dreamt of that, never in my wildest dream would I think I would win it – actually, I didn’t even know it existed until I was informed that I was in the running!)

Thank you, dear friends who have helped prop me up and given me all that amazing strength to persist.

WE DID IT!

Scheherazade lives on.

Autistic Thriving @ TEDx

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This is the complete unedited script of my TEDx speech, delivered today amidst a flurry of technical failures and farcical-comedic twists. (Read about it here.)

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AUTISTIC THRIVING
Dawn-joy Leong
4 August 2018
TEDx Pickering Street
Singapore

~

I dance,
Because
I cannot walk,
The ground,
It is too strange.
I must count:
One, two,
One, two, three!

Autistic people are given many different labels by the non-autistic world. One of them is ‘clumsy,’ and by that measure, I suppose I am – it is a conscious effort for me to walk in a straight line, navigate bumpy surfaces, and stroll and chat at the same time. Yet, how does ‘clumsiness’ explain the ability to dance? When there is music, my body becomes freed from the tyranny of the walk, and the ground doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. Continue reading →

ABA Study

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This study is reaching out to people who have gone through ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) programmes or similar, to provide actual lived-experience feedback. Open to international participants. Please email Prof Terry Cummings directly.

Please do consider joining. I understand that many of you may have PTSD associated with this and it will be very difficult and even traumatic to re-visit, but it is important that your experiences be made known. Continue reading →

And Suddenly…

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And Suddenly

Cast Photo by Victor Kuansong Zhuang. Thank you for permission to use.

Yesterday, I attended the final performance – a matinee – of “And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore ‘d’ Monologues“. My friend, Alvan, has written a brief review of the show here. I like some of his views on it, and I highly recommend a quick visit to his blog post.

This isn’t a review of the play, really, it is more a sensory recollection. Continue reading →

Disabled Leadership in practice

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In a previous post, I mused about Disabled Leadership, the great divide between theory and practice that many disabled persons face, and suggested one fundamental element that is crucial to recognition of disabled participants in the conversation on disability: payment as a basic mark of respect. Now, in this brief ‘follow-up’ post, I’d like to provide some straight-forward concrete examples of its practice in the arts and film.

I’ve iterated and reiterated before, and now once more, I am no activist – I have an aversion for confrontational activity, but advocacy is something that most disabled professionals are forced to engage in (in some way or other) due to the dominating climate of ableism and stubborn ignorance surrounding the disabled practitioner. In other words, advocacy – sometimes quite vehement and insistent – is made necessary because disabled practitioners need to clear the debris-strewn paths, clogged channels, and polluted waterways so that we can proceed with our practice. Continue reading →

Reluctant Advocate

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I am not an “Autism Activist” – far from it – so, please do not call me that. Thank you. I do support the work of activists, it is a necessary force when things are woefully wrong and a great deal of vim and vigour is needed to create change for the better. It is just that my natural constitution does not fit well with the vivacity required for effective activism. Sometimes, though, I do engage in advocacy. Well, all right, quite often especially of late, but this is not what I deliberately set out to do. I am, first and foremost, an autistic researcher and multi-artist. Unpacking this further, my research interests include (but are not confined to) autism, autistic sensory idiosyncrasies, alternative and elemental empathic resonance, clement spaces of mind and body, and my material practice reflects this research, employing multiple artistic disciplines. I love my research and multi-art practice, and I adore my beloved Lucy Like-a-Charm, the two represent mental, emotional and physical wellbeing and equilibrium to me. Continue reading →

Disabled People Have an Ally Problem: They Need to Stop Talking For Us

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Important points very clearly put forth. Disabled Leadership can and must happen, but first, the ground needs to be laid. And this article lays it down very well. Read and learn!

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My mom and I were in the store when it happened. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, unfortunately. It was a common occurrence, “par for the course” as they say. An acquaintance of my mother (my mom’s real friends know better) had walked over to us and started a conversation with us. Just normal things until she switched the conversation to kids, she looked and my mother and asked “what subject does she like most in school?” Despite standing right beside my mother, despite having been introduced to me by my mother, despite the fact I had nodded quite attentively to what she had yammered on about, she decided to ignore my presence and address the question to my mother. For most abled people, this may seem like a momentary slip up in decorum, but for disabled people this is all to familiar: proximity to…

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Disabled Leadership in theory & practice

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There is increasing talk about Disabled Leadership in the Arts. There are stirrings, positive ones, potentially amazing even, in the arena of the Arts and Disability. (Even in wider fields, for example Autism Research – just reading the Twitter feed coming from IMSAR2018 indicates that level of Actual Autistic participation has increased and that is a cause for hope for a better future in research and practice.)

Excitement and awareness aside, there are still some brass tacks issues to face and tackle head on. Before we can even make that leap into Disabled Leadership, there needs to be some basic concepts of respectful and ethical interactional treatment of disabled people. How do we establish leadership if the non-disabled world cannot even bring themselves to the level of viewing disabled people as human beings worthy of esteem and regard as equal participants in society?

A fundamental topic is that of payment. Yes. Money. And plain simple respect. Let’s start here. Continue reading →

bloviation & the sacrificial lamb

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My recent casual blog post, musing on Arts and Disability, and the devastating effects of non-disabled colonisation of the disability conversation, theory and practice in any field, with a focus on the arts, simply because this is my field of research and praxis.

“Perhaps it is time to take the entire conversation back and situate it on our own platform – the Actually Autistic / Actually Disabled stage. One that we choose for ourselves, not that which is designed and built by the non-disabled colonising forces. One in which there is no prerequisite social-political posturing of ambiguous, veiled or hushed up mumblings, no copious mists of gas lighting, and no contemptuous slime of condescension. Just honest truth and a light shining onto a path ahead clear of the debris of gurgling bloviation. Is this even a possibility, I wonder?”