Check out Autonomous Press's signature annual anthology series in this two volume set that includes both the original volume, Thoughts on Defiance, Compliance and Resistance, as well as the follow-up Test Chamber. Each book presents more than thirty unique neuroqueer voices, spanning genres from science fiction to literary poetry, memoir, and more. Stories include Monday Dillon's "Four Million Years Ago," N.I. Nicholson's "What Gender is My Wheelchair?" and Nick Walker's "Brianna and the Wu-Hernandez." Notable poetic voices include Athena Michaels-Dillon writing as Athena the Architect; Fable the Poet, the current Poet Laureate in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Stephanie Heit, as well as many others. These stories do not flinch from confronting the lived issues of neuroqueer folk, including close-up depictions of electroshock therapy from the patient's point of view, medical coercion, abuse narratives, and stories of survival. They are not all dark, though. They also include stories of triumph and survival, of achieving or keeping independence, of holding and controlling spaces. Give yourself the gift of these thoughts on being, whether you come from a neuroqueer identity or not, and find yourself transported through a variety of mental landscapes and ways of perceiving the world that you have probably never even considered. Familiar places and common settings like downtown Chicago or the rural Midwest become unfamiliar as you navigate them through the perceptions of people so different from one another that no one reader can identify with them all.
