Count Us In Analysis

When reading autobiographies written by people with disabilities, a source of tension can sometimes stem from the author and the mediatory forces which surround their writing process. When reading autobiographies about individuals with intellectual disabilities, however, this tension colors every inch of the text, from its organizational structure to the progression of its narrative. This can call the reliability of the content into question. In the case of memoirs such as Rachel Simon’s Riding the Bus with my Sister and Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz’s Count Us In, the various forms of narrative mediation present essentially warp the texts into providing narratives exclusively targeted at a non-disabled audience. To elaborate, their stories
For Rachel Simon’s Riding the Bus with my Sister, this mediation is found in the fact that Beth had no hand in the text’s writing whatsoever. In short, every aspect of the memoir’s structure and chronology came down to Rachel Simon, and Rachel Simon alone. The structural elements of the memoir put the text’s authenticity into question as well. Riding the Bus with my Sister is divided into thirteen separate sections, each section titled with a month of the year. This monthly system aligns with the text’s linear chronology. Once the reader begins to delve into these sections, the text’s temporality divides between the present and the past. This doesn’t seem too hazardous at first, however, it becomes increasingly clear that Rachel isn’t even entirely conscious of the events at hand during a number of these flashbacks. For example, in the second flashback of the memoir, Rachel begins by dictating how old she and her siblings are at that moment, writing that “Laura is six, [she is] five, Beth is four, [and] Max two,” before jumping into a detailed story about Beth’s refusal to wear dresses (Simon 48). As one might guess, this flashback calls into question how intact a memory can be if Rachel is recalling it from her childhood. Rachel’s reliability as a narrator retracts even more as she recalls memories which she
This mediation is specifically found through Jason and Mitchell’s parents’ editorial presence. Their parents’ editorial presence can be found in two forms—they either cut out what Jason and Mitchell have said, a mysterious alteration denoted by the insertion of ellipsis, or they ask questions to steer the conversations at hand. Most of their questions are fairly benign, such as “do you want to have children?” and “do you think you’re ready to have your own place to live?” and so on (Kingsley 91-170). There are moments, however, when questions are directly interfering with the progression of the account at hand. One example occurs while Mitchell is speaking to Jason’s father, Charles, about his opinion regarding Jason and Tami’s relationship. Charles answers curiously, asking “Think you can handle it?” before delving into his answer (Kingsley 81). In this instance, Charles did not deter the conversation from its natural path, but the text’s audience cannot be sure if this has occurred elsewhere what with the omitted portions of the text. Thus, the freedom of expression which is vital to Jason and Mitchell’s agency as authors does not seem to be wholly secure with their parents’ presence as regulatory forces. Though all texts