Review of Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actor's Journey to Broadway's Biggest Stage
Person with bottom of their face hidden behind open book, Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actor's Journey to Broadway's Biggest Stage. Laying on other books that are open. Credit: https://mickeyrowe.com/
By Neil Hughes, Special Projects Associate at Diversability
Disclosure: This review was written for the Diversability Leadership Collective after receiving a complimentary copy of Mikey Rowe's Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actor's Journey to Broadway's Biggest Stage.
Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actor's Journey to Broadway's Biggest Stage is Mickey Rowe’s story of growing up autistic and pushing beyond the restrictions of a special education classroom to shine on Broadway. As an autistic and legally blind person, living in a society designed by and for non-disabled people, it was always made clear to Rowe the many things he was apparently incapable of doing. But Rowe did them all anyway - and he succeeded because of, not in spite of, his autism. Rowe faced untold obstacles along the way, but his story ends in triumph.
Rowe was cast in the lead role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and was the last Broadway performance before COVID-19 lockdown. Fearlessly Different is the story of how he overcame ableist systems to find that career path and parent his children. Most of all it is a story of practical ideas from a survivor and a bulletproof frame of mind to overcome this terrible world to create a life of abundance and joy. At its best moments, the text is on par with the other survival father narrative of our time: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Fearlessly Different has been picked apart in places on the internet for failing to produce a consistent pace, or even narrative. That criticism is clearly from reviewers who either have not experienced ableist oppression and the chaos it creates or have lived-experience of disability but sit in places of privilege and do not acknowledge the herculean strength required to maintain life-work balance as a disabled person.
Writing Style And Similar Texts
Fearlessly Different feels like at least five literary modes: couched as a true-to-life Dickens or Horacio Algers street urchin rags-to-riches story, Fearlessly Different is also built upon the literary bedrock of Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a first example of self-redemption narrative. The book is an incisive call to action like Mina Loy's Feminist Manifesto and a criminal indictment like Roberto Bolano's section of 2666, Part 4: The Part About the Crimes. Best of all, Fearlessly Different is as effective as any parental how-to book for making the world a more inclusive place for our children's future.
Told with complete vulnerability like Elissa Washuta's first work, My Body is a Book of Rules, this book tops my list of best writing about survival in an ableist world. With the best aspects of the book written exactly and unapologetically like the author experiences the traumas as a blind autistic father and husband. Not for the fragile ableist reader, there are no masks on this stage and like Washuta's work, this is by design. Rowe begins asking the pre-disabled reader to please take their time and relax their hold on what they believe disability is about. Get ready for a wild ride.
Rowe’s writing is absolutely essential reading for any disabled person trying to survive ableism and provide a safe jungle path for those who are behind us and need us to be strong. Please watch your step as you board this pirate ship on the Salish Sea; yes, even the most seasoned disabled captains will want to brace for an emotional rollercoaster.
Adaptation and Readability
I appreciated Rowe’s very deliberate breaks in style. These choices reminded me of the grace in Stamped From The Beginning by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi on the creation and perpetuation of humanity's worst imagining, not just the institution of racist enslavement of people for the colonist empires, but the mechanism of slavery laws through the simple act of imagining falsely that people of color are less than human. In the young adult version of Stamped, Reynolds and Kendi created space on the page for the reader to relax their hold on the trauma. This version worked for a younger audience and anyone who needed a more lyrical version to get the same message with less dysregulation.
Similarly, Rowe clearly provides these same compassionate storytelling road signs on the page. And on top of that, he has a plain language summary of Fearlessly Different adapted by the eminent professor of disability studies Rebecca Monteleone.This version can be found on his website by clicking the link for the plain language summary. The website also includes several well written reviews that I completely agree with.
I used the plain language summary to orient myself to the main points of his book as many of the difficult parts were overwhelming. Reading the summary allowed me to complete the book in one sitting, while reading the original text required weeks of study and space to absorb and regulate the trauma narrative parts of the book.
A Call to Action
Fearlessly Different is a book about surviving ableism and creating a more equitable future by confronting the lie that what makes you disabled is your weakness. Instead the constant refrain throughout his memoir is what makes you different is your greatest strength.
Fearlessly Different is a call to action. Be free! Be free of internalized ableism, for your own happiness and for future generations. The book encourages readers to create opportunities to discover their truth. Develop the skills to advance in that truth. And reap the rewards of living fearlessly because you know the world is broken, not you.
That process of living freely can be messy and needs a safe place to proceed. One way Rowe prepares the reader is with this metaphor, "When a caterpillar wraps itself in a chrysalis to become a butterfly, it first must turn into an entirely liquid soup inside of that chrysalis. There has to be nothing left of the caterpillar, only runny liquid. And goo. And mess. And only then it becomes a butterfly."
Rowe tells all his truths and those stories are intentional to draw the reader into the chrysalis of his story so the reader can create their own safe place to reform from the mess of ableism’s oppressive and destructive lies, to become the powerful artists we are all capable of becoming. Like reading a modern-day Fredrick Douglass, Rowe is reshaping the expectations of what disabled people are capable of. His story is not just about his success, (like Fredrick Douglass, who wrote his autobiography in response to Northerner's doubts that an enslaved person could ever become so eloquent.) The main storyline in Fearlessly Different is that we are all different and therefore, we are all capable of making a just world. We all need to be free to do that. What Lydia X.Z. Brown called collective liberation in their fireside chat with the Diversability Leadership Collective (DLC) in the Spring of 2022.
In novels, the artist’s journey to mastery is called a bildungsroman. As a student of literature my favorite one was Roberto Bolano's 2666. Fearlessly Different has eclipsed that masterful work as Rowe is not telling a fiction to shed light on the truth that we are all capable of freedom. He is telling that truth from lived-experience and making the light available for your own stage.
Please read Fearlessly Different, a story about a disabled artist who changed the world. Those changes created opportunities for countless other disabled people. It is only the opportunity he offers. You must take the first step. Read this book. It can change your whole outlook on this terrible beautiful world. It has mine.
The DLC has been a chrysalis for me and I feel like this opportunity to review Fearlessly Different is the best kind of proof of concept for "theory of change" here in the DLC since Rowe is handing us a how-to-change narrative. Thank you Mikey Rowe! Your life is proof that there is hope on this path to liberation. "Disability is a bumpy road" as Mary Fashik says on her podcast. Reading books like Fearlessly Different is how I buckle up.
About the author:
Neil Hughes graduated with an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2016. Neil worked to design adaptive skateboarding curriculum for the City of Charlottesville. An adaptive athlete and developmentally disabled, Neil knows the power to change lives with physical movement and lyrical movement on the page. Neil is still in voc-rehab, and everyday making the effort to rise above through being an active member of the Diversability Leadership Collective.