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 Illustration by Alicia Adamerovich | I am autistic. With three words I have conjured millions of ideas and impressions about the kind of person I am and what I might or might not be capable of. I can’t control what anyone else is going to make of this, or how they’re going to relate to it or to me. The only thing I have control over is the choice to say it or not. When I was first told that I was autistic, I had no idea what it meant. I’d been reading self-help books and seeing therapists for years, and no one had ever mentioned it. Then, at acting school, I met a woman called Kristina. She was twenty years my senior, and I started spending time with her, her daughter Sofia, their cat Cara Mia, and a sea of Himalayan-salt lamps every weekend. We would talk and cry and laugh and eat dark chocolate and drink coffee, and I never felt drained or exasperated by the way we communicated. It was a revelation. One day I shared this, and Kristina put her hand on mine and said, “That’s because you’re autistic, like we are, Madeleine.” It took years to come to terms with this and to go through the official diagnostic-assessment process. Identity is a big responsibility, and it can be tempting to tremble in the face of its power. Embracing autism means embracing mystery. The way it manifests in women isn’t widely understood or celebrated. Which essentially means that autism isn’t widely understood or celebrated. All we know is that it cannot be healed, changed, or undone. It isn’t a pimple, a diet, a broken bone, or last season’s trench coat. Technically, it isn’t even a mental illness. It’s how my brain is wired. Autism isn’t something that I have; it’s something that I am. And I love being autistic. The only difficulty has been experiencing the way doctors, parents, teachers, journalists, and advocates control the autistic voice. My daily experiences don’t have the monopoly on autism’s narrative. Words are put into my mouth because I find it difficult to speak, or I don’t want to. Presumption rules my silences and unrealistic expectations are placed on how I must learn, work, and relate. People-first terminology litters my landscape to the point where I can’t even see who and what I am clearly. I recently wrote a story for a newspaper, and the editor changed the line “I am autistic” to “I have autism” and published the piece without asking me about it. I wrestled with this for days. My inclination is always to put the authority figure first. “She’s the editor, so it’s her call, yeah?” and “I guess that’s the politically correct way of saying it?” and “People-first terminology is supposed to be empowering, right?” Then I realized how disempowered I felt. I hadn’t made the choice to “have” autism. She’d made it for me. So I talked with my mind and heart about the difference between having autism and being autistic, and when I called autism something that I had, I felt a mix of sadness, disappointment, and betrayal. It was like a rejection of myself. Through keeping autism at a distance, I was breaking my own heart. I asked her to change it, and she did. The world has decided who an autistic person is without knowing much about us. Family and friends frequently say how “shocked” they are to learn that I’m autistic: “You’re the last person I would’ve thought was!” and “You must be highly functioning!” I don’t know how to respond. Autism is a spectrum, not a scale. I’m no more or less or autistic than any other autistic person, it’s just that I don’t fit people’s assumptions about it. A few years after Kristina brought autism to my attention, I decided to go through the official assessment process because I thought it might offer more information and clarity. Yet even the doctor who assessed me was thrown by the fact that I could look her in the eye and say that I’d read every book on the subject of autism, because of course I had — I am my special interest. She was one of the only doctors in Australia who works with girls and women on the spectrum, and she still asked me to fill out questionnaires I’d already done online based on criteria sourced from boys and men. She spent hours interviewing my family, interrogating my boyfriend, sending me to speech pathologists and insisting that I come to her city-based office to receive the final report and partake in another “feedback session.” I didn’t feel safe with her or her methodology, so I asked to receive the report via email. The mere idea of more face-to-face time was too overwhelming. The clinic where she worked was built with the smell of hand sanitizer. There were low ceilings, fluorescent lights, stained carpets, sticky leather couches, heavy mahogany desks, a packed waiting room, and her intent gaze over a notepad. And the result of her report was going to affect the rest of my life and identity. Every experience I had had — and was going to have — would become autistic. My differentness would become official. So I wanted to receive the information in the comfort of my own home. In response, she said that in her many years of clinical experience, no one had ever asked for that, and she wouldn’t recommend it. The needs of the autistic aren’t met even by those who diagnose us. We’ve had no say in how we are treated or communicated with. We’re told that we’re impaired, and we’re meant to accept that. I don’t. When I first encountered autism with Kristina, I felt happy and held. She smelled like rose geranium because she always does. The environment was serene, the couch was soft, and I was not disabled. I was home. So when I say “I am autistic,” it doesn’t feel like I’m revealing something to be frightened or ashamed of. It feels like I’m saying magical words. Madeleine Ryan is a writer based in Australia who is getting closer and closer to finishing her first novel. | | | | |
 Illustration by Frances Murphy | My dad’s side of the family are Sephardic Jews with roots in Greece and Turkey. From a young age, food was a way for me to understand my heritage, but we never ate the Jewish foods you typically think of. There were no matzoh balls, latkes, brisket, or babka. Our dishes aren’t transcribed in any of the hip, new “bring back the deli” cookbooks. We pass our recipes on verbally from one generation to the next, be it how to master the homemade dough for spinach boyos or how to braise green beans in tomato sauce until they’re cooked just shy of falling apart. But there is one cookbook from the Ladies Auxiliary at my Noni’s synagogue that has become my CliffsNotes guide to her cooking. You know the type: no proofreading, ten recipes for the same dish because they couldn’t say no to anyone, and God forbid there be an index. When I think of the foods found in this book or on my Noni’s table, — dishes like flaky pastries, slow-cooked veggies, braised meats, and lots of rice — it quickly becomes clear that there’s one thing that ties everything together: feta. Growing up, feta was in and on everything. For breakfast, it was crumbled on toast and put under the broiler or tossed into scrambled eggs. For lunch, it was usually eaten on its own but occasionally in a Greek-style salad. For dinner or brunch, it was baked with spinach and eggs to make our version of a frittata, called quashado; rolled into boyos (a spinach-and-cheese biscuit of sorts); or sprinkled over braised beans. And for any time of day, it was stuffed into phyllo dough, pastries I’d inevitably eat by the dozen. The briny, salty tang of the cheese made everything pop in a way I thought was totally normal, until my friends would take a bite and make a face, saying, ”What kind of cheese is that?” This wasn’t just any feta. Noni would drive across my hometown of Seattle to the one Middle Eastern market that carried the cheese in huge blocks. She’d buy pounds at a time, drive it home, cover it in her own brine (throwing out the one that it came in), and stash it in the fridge (yes, there was a lot of feta in her fridge). She spent her winters in Palm Springs and even made my grandpa drive her to Pasadena, where the closest Lebanese market with cheese that met her standards was located. Noni never bought pre-crumbled, dry supermarket feta. Ours was usually made with sheep’s milk, tangy in a pleasant, barnyard way, and creamy, too. As a kid, I loved it. It was part of my daily diet. But I did think her unwavering commitment to hauling pounds of the stuff across the city was, well, strange. Twenty years ago, I started cooking professionally and caring meticulously about ingredients, and, yes, I even found myself driving all over the city to get exactly the right things, including my own feta. I don’t rebrine it when I get home, but the block sits proudly in my fridge and finds its way into dishes all day long. To this day, whenever I bite into feta, part of me feels transported to Noni’s kitchen. I can still hear her instructing me to eat the fila slower because they took so long to make. Noni’s Fila These pastries, simply called fila, are much like a Greek tiropita, triangles of flaky dough filled with a mixture of mashed potatoes and feta. They freeze well unbaked, so do like the grandmas do and make a huge batch. Makes ~36 triangles 2 cups mashed potatoes (leftovers work great here)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1½ cups crumbled sheep’s-milk feta
1 cup finely grated Parmesan or Pecorino
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 package frozen phyllo dough, thawed at room temp for 1 to 2 hours
1 stick butter, melted In a medium bowl, mix together the potatoes, eggs, feta, half of the Parmesan, and the salt. Preheat oven to 375°F. Unwrap phyllo dough, and remove from inside wrapping. Unfold, and lie on a work surface. Cover the dough with plastic wrap, and cover the plastic with a slightly damp towel, making sure none of the dough is exposed to the air (or it will dry out). Remove two sheets of dough from the stack, re-covering the rest of the dough. Brush each sheet with a layer of melted butter, and place one on top of the other, with the long side facing you. Cut the doubled sheets into eight strips from top to bottom. Take a walnut-sized mound of the potato mixture and place it at the bottom of each strip. Fold up each strip over the filling, as you would fold a flag to form a triangle. Place finished triangles on a baking sheet, seam side down, and brush with a bit more butter. Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan, and when each sheet is full, bake until lightly browned and crisp, 10 to 15 minutes. Serve warm. To freeze, place baking sheet of wrapped fila in the freezer until frozen solid. Transfer pastries to a zip-top bag, seal tightly, and freeze up to one month. They can be transferred to a baking sheet and baked directly from the freezer; just add a few extra minutes of baking time. Jodi Liano is the founder of the San Francisco Cooking School, a career-focused cooking institution that teaches students how to cultivate culinary intuition for contemporary, professional kitchens. Prior to launching the school, Jodi taught at Tante Maria’s Cooking School, worked in the test kitchen at Food Network, and authored four Williams-Sonoma cookbooks. | | | | |  Illustration by Alexandra Citrin | When I got off the plane at JFK after a year living with my biological dad in Texas, I saw my mom waiting for me. It was almost in that same spot, just a year before, that I had watched her walk away, shipping me off to live with a man who was a stranger to me. He had promised a life that my mom could never afford, and in her mind, she had paid her dues. It was his turn to deal with me. So off I went to live with the man she continuously told me was a loser so she was free to be with the current loser taking up space in her love life. The next summer, I returned wearing the same outfit I had on when I left her, clothes that were now too young and ill-fitting. My dad made sure I didn’t take any of the clothes that he had bought me over the past year, allowing me to keep only two stuffed animals from my collection, holding all of my things hostage. The final two weeks with my dad were spent earning my keep: doing the dishes, cooking, sweeping, being shoved and kicked up the stairs to remind me that they needed vacuuming too. He was making me pay for my future betrayal while he still could. And he was right. I had no plans to return after summer break. The only catch was asking my mom if I could stay back in New York with her. I didn’t want her to know I needed her. I couldn’t bear hearing her say no. On top of that, I had spent a year lying about how great my life with Dad was in an attempt to hurt her like she had hurt me. I lied about everything. I lied about driving to school in a Mercedes, about having friends who came from oil-money families, about Benetton shopping sprees. I even went so far as to say I’d gotten a pony. No lie was too outrageous when it came to letting her know how much better off I was without her. It was the summer of ’86 and my baseball team, the New York Mets, were on their way to achieving their own lofty mission — winning the World Series. I saw myself in them. We were both ragtag perennial losers. They blew games and seasons; I blew chances for something more. Too scared to be who I was and petrified people would find out where I came from. No one expected much from either of us, and the Mets felt like all I had. Relying on womanizing drunks and cokeheads had never served me well before, but these guys hurt only themselves. They weren't the kind who hurt me. The kind who made me too scared to shower, so that I had to wash one body part at a time in the sink, never fully undressed, never risking my dad “accidentally” walking in on me naked. The trajectories of my life and my team’s couldn’t have been more opposite. For them, everything was a drive toward the postseason, while I was dreading its approach. I was haunted by the previous summer, the last time I was unable to ask my mom to let me stay. Watching her purse bump her hip as she walked away from me at the airport. Willing her to turn around and give me a sign that I didn't have to go. Each purse bump was like a slap in the face. In New York that summer, I threw myself into avoidance. I constantly babysat so I could buy tickets to games and pay for the train to Shea Stadium. Surrounded by drunk fans in the cheap seats, I felt safe. They called me Strawberry because of my hair and the Darryl Strawberry jersey I wore. They protected me and yelled at the lazy men who would piss right in the stands. “Keep your dick in your pants. There’s a little girl here!” they’d say, as if I hadn’t seen that kind of thing a million times before. But every train ride home brought me closer to the end of summer. Last time I hadn’t say anything, but I hadn’t known what my life with Dad would be like then. Now I knew. Mom was shocked when I finally asked. What about the singing lessons? What about my rainbow canopy bed from the Spiegel catalog? What about the boyfriend who looked like Ralph Macchio? She rattled off all the lies I told. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want that life. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want me. I still couldn’t tell her about all the bad things. That nothing I’d said about living with my dad was true. I felt like someone trapped in their own body, indicating they were still conscious with only their eyes, screaming internally for someone to see me. She eventually said that she had to ask her boyfriend, which seemed worse than no. My fate was now in the hands of a man who once came out during Christmas wearing Rudolph-themed underwear, his soft penis barely filling out the snout. I distracted myself with finding hidden meanings, once again looking for signs, tying every victory, every at bat, to my own situation. Twisting my logic of what things meant to fit the outcome I wanted. Lying awake in my bed every night, obsessing over stats, thinking about the Mets’ “magic number” — how many wins until they clinched. And what city would they be in? Their fate as uncertain as mine. When Mom finally told me that I could stay, it was uneventful. There was no emotional, “very special episode” hug between us. How do you thank your mom for keeping you? My old anxiety about going back to live with my dad was replaced by an overwhelming sense of dread that my good luck had fucked up my team’s chances. I went back to my Queens public school angry. Angry that everyone was the same and that I had to be different. Angry at the Phillies, the Phillie Phanatic, the flu that momentarily took down Keith Hernandez. Angry that things weren’t fair. Angry that I still so stupidly had hope that one day things would be better, clinging to that sliver of hope like it was a barely inflated lifeboat. When the Mets finally made it to the World Series, I became more and more convinced that fate was a tease, bringing me to the brink of victory only to snatch it away. Game Six illustrated that perfectly. A ninth-inning rally by the Mets almost seemed cruel — to lose in extra innings would be unbearable. As the bottom of the tenth started, we were down by two. We scored again, but unlike the crowd at Shea Stadium, I refused to explode in cheers. It won’t hurt as much if you stop caring now. Didn’t they know? Mookie Wilson was at bat, quickly getting to a 2-1 count, one strike away from the end. But an endless at bat of foul balls and a wild pitch tied up the game. Then Mookie hit a ground ball to first, the kind of easy out that ends innings. Only it didn’t. It went through Bill Buckner’s legs, escaping the clutch of the mitt just like I had escaped my dad. A moment so stunning, I wouldn’t have believed we had won if I hadn’t heard Vin Scully yelling at me, as if he were waking me from a bad dream. I knew then that we were safe. This was our year, and it was finally OK to cry. We would go on to win Game Seven two nights later, making the Mets the World Series champions. Purse bumps, loser boyfriends, and sink baths were replaced with the almost-painful invasion of joy. I let myself feel it. At least until the next season. Desi Jedeikin is a writer living in Los Angeles. She co-hosts the podcast Hollywood Crime Scene. | | | | |  Stephanie Baptist at Medium Tings Photo by Yaminah Mayo | Picture an art gallery. What’s the first thing that comes to mind: bare white walls, an aloof, sometimes unwelcoming atmosphere, and, if you’re a black woman, few people in the space — from owners and curators to patrons and artists — that resemble you. In April, an NPR article, “Not Enough Color in American Art Museums,” made the issue more clear: the lack of black people occupying American art spaces is a systematic problem, with no real measure in place to make a change. In the collective makeup of museum staffs (curators, conservators, educators, and leadership), white people make up 84 percent, while black people make up only 4 percent. Familiar with the dire climate, Stephanie Baptist decided to create a space of her own: eggshell-white walls, bare wooden floors, a marble fireplace, and a few potted plants, all in an unlikely place: the living room of her Crown Heights brownstone. “I’m sitting here like, Is anybody going to come to the living room? It’s not good enough; it needs to be in a brick and mortar. But I don’t have money for a brick and mortar,” Baptist says. Joining the ranks of other black-women gallerists such as Karen Jenkins-Johnson, Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels, and Michelle Papillion, Baptist opened Medium Tings in 2017. “Medium” is a reference to both the size of the gallery and the method in which the art is made (photography, painting, and sculpture), and “Tings” is a nod to the West Indian influence in the neighborhood.  Installation view of Beauty in the Unknown: Milo Matthieu & Austin Willis Photo by Jackie Furtado |
After working stints as head of exhibitions for Tiwani Contemporary in London and then as program director for En Foco in the Bronx, Baptist set out to create a space that would help combat the lack of jobs for black people within the art world. Now Medium Tings has morphed into a space that amplifies the voices of up-and-coming artists of color, and through programming it creates opportunities for dialogue around the work. So far, the gallery has introduced artworks from seven different artists, including photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis, mixed-media artist Temitayo Ogunbiyi, and performance artist Ayana Evans (currently on view). In an industry that often excludes people of certain races and class, Medium Tings serves as an intermediary between art-world neophytes and serious collectors, acting as an environment that not only attempts to melt away the stigmas and broaden the access we have to these spaces but also helps us reconsider what we think of as art. For Lenny Letter, I spoke with Baptist, who works in production by day and burns the midnight oil as a gallery owner and curator, about the importance of Medium Tings within the art world and the rebellious spirit of its mission.  Installation view of Beauty in the Unknown: Milo Matthieu & Austin Willis Photo by Jackie Furtado |
Yaminah Mayo: Medium Tings follows in the lineage of places like Studio Museum in Harlem and the former Papillion gallery in Los Angeles, setting out to incubate and nurture young artists, especially black artists. How important is the nurturing of artists versus being thrown into the mainstream? Stephanie Baptist: There is something to be said for a little bit of nurturing, because the art industry can be really brutal and disconnected. The majority of the collectors that are buying the work are not actually understanding it; they’re buying on the strength of what’s going to sell. When you’re seeing figurative works by black artists and when white collectors are buying it, it is more this observation of the beautiful black body, as opposed to having to deep-dive or tackle any of the really heavier conflicts, because it’s not something that’s relevant. It would be more like: “Look at the Kerry James Marshall that I own on my wall.” Meanwhile, maybe if you decoded some of the clues that are packed in the painting, you might not have bought it. You might’ve realized it’s actually not speaking to you; it’s speaking about you. There’s an importance to having somebody who looks like the artist who’s actually representing the artist, because I can tap into some of the nuances and we actually can talk about it.  Installation view of Beauty in the Unknown: Milo Matthieu & Austin Willis Photo by Jackie Furtado |
YM: Why is it important that these artists are newcomers? SB: There is a way the younger generation is actually working through their issues, and it’s coming across really strong to me. They’re speaking about the world in such an incredible, raw way, that when you get a little bit more polished, you don’t really do. All of a sudden, you fall into the format of the art world: mind your words, be a little bit more careful, be a little bit more diplomatic. So then you need to be the voice that is able to pull out all these themes. It is important for me to continue to work with the emerging demographic, because I’m allowing them platforms to both be experimental, where I'm like, Yeah, do your thing, that's cool and also for them to feel like, do they need a B.A. to have a show? YM: The space is so intimate and in some ways changes how art is observed. Was that your mission for this space? SB: Art can often make people feel uncomfortable or confused, as there is a general assumption that you are supposed to “understand” what you see in front of you. I wanted to bridge that gap for the public by introducing them to art in a different type of way. I want the space to be inviting and a resource where art enthusiasts and budding collectors can speak with the artists and meet other like-minded individuals. Most people who come in have been a lot of new collectors of art. They don’t feel intimidated, because I want to talk to everybody. We don’t got to talk about art, we can just hang out. It’s on the walls, and it’ll just penetrate you in its own way.  Installation view of Beauty in the Unknown: Milo Matthieu & Austin Willis Photo by Jackie Furtado |
YM: How do you envision the growth of Medium Tings? SB: I think about all the galleries that I admire, the ones that are larger scale, like Hauser & Wirth. In five to ten years’ time, I would love to have a publishing press and perhaps a few domestic and international locations. I am ambitious but definitely want to grow Medium Tings organically. YM: What is one piece of advice you would give to anyone looking to enter into the art world? SB: Just start where you are. That’s always my advice. If you have an interest in art, then you need to go to art shows. If you want to do something more than going to an art show, then find allies. Find other people that are actually doing the work and just try to approach them and get to know these people. Go up to artists. I feel like we’re in a dawn right now where there’s always going to be somebody who says yes. Ayana Evans’s If Keisha Jumped Off a Bridge, Would You Do It Too? is showing at Medium Tings until June 24. Yaminah Mayo is a content creator and writer behind Spicy Mayo. | | | | | | | | |
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