Photographer, graphic designer and author Valérie Jessica Laporte, also spokesperson for the Quebec Federation of Autism, explores different facets of autism in her second book, Asymmetric. This quirky, learning novel takes readers into the daily life of an autistic tween who tries to synchronize her mind, body, and connections with others.
The novel’s narrator, a preteen that the readers of the author’s previous novel, Unrecognizable, will recognize, goes to live with his father. She now calls him Keyfather, because he has become the key to her new attempt to relate to humans who do not look like him.
Over the pages, this “different” girl discovers unsuspected skills and competences. His apprenticeship, slow and difficult, is strewn with great joys. It will culminate when she has to rescue someone who is in danger of sinking.
Valérie Jessica Laporte, in the novel, talks about the characteristics of autism, learning, the functions attributed to people, the butterfly effect sometimes generated by very small changes, such as a haircut.
fragmented life
The novel can be read independently without having trouble finding your bearings, assures Valérie Jessica Laporte, in an interview.
“It’s really the complete evolution of a very fragmented part of the character’s life, as if it came in small pieces. It looks like he’s been grafting modules!” she said.
Valérie Jessica reveals that she too works by “modules”.
“The module that made me change something was when the psychoeducator made me aware of my values. I never realized that there were things that were important to me that weren’t an object or a situation. I never understood that.”
Photo courtesy of Éditions Libre Expression
Right now, for example, she is learning to play pickleball. It’s kind of his module.
“There is a stage where I work a lot on my reflexes. It works so well that I will keep this sport!” In people who are not autistic, she says, the evolution is more fluid.
The helping relationship
Valérie Jessica Laporte wanted to explore the helping relationship and reciprocity in Asymmetric.
“There are so many ways to make a huge difference in someone’s life, without becoming the person who sacrifices themselves to make that difference. In a balanced relationship, it happens on both sides, ”she notes.
Another point discussed concerns the labels attached to disabilities.
“Personally, disability is not the first thing I see in people. It’s traits much stronger than that that go over the top, like personality.”
The author talks about silence in her book: her character remained walled in silence for 832 days. Valérie Jessica Laporte explains that there are many aspects of mutism in autism spectrum disorders, giving an example of selective mutism.
“There are situations, for example, where the person is no longer able to speak. It’s just too much. From my point of view, it’s that I know I can speak, but I can’t find the door, the path, I’m completely blocked. It happens to me quite rarely, but it happened to me. And it doesn’t last.”
“For me, it’s when I’m scared or when there’s a situation that has too much of an emotional charge. When it happens too suddenly, I will fall into selective mutism,” she explains.
The “long-term” mutism referred to in the book is different.
“The little girl stops talking because she wants to stop talking. I tried many times to do it when I was young. I needed to do this. But it didn’t work because I was forced to quit.”
In bookstores March 29.
- Valérie Jessica Laporte is a photographer and graphic designer.
- She is spokesperson for the Quebec Federation of Autism.
- Son premier roman, Unrecognizablewon the Discovery Prize awarded by the Salon du livre du Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean in 2020, then the Chambéry first novel prize in 2021.
- His Facebook page, Bleuet atypique, has more than 18,000 subscribers.
EXTRACT
«In this establishment, all defectives are in the same class. An adapted class, a very small group. We can all be put together because a secondary school is much more populous than a primary school, so they can more easily combine the complicated into a condensed package. They take up less space as well as if they were scattered throughout the normal ones. I don’t like taking up space.”