Upcoming Events!
January 2019
January 11-12th
South Texas Special Needs Conference, Edinburgh, TX
Screening with Q & A; Keynote on Building Inclusive Lives: Interdependence, Self-Determination & Advocacy
February 2019
February 6th
Screening & discussion; teach poetry workshop
February 7th
SUNY/Brockport
Screening with discussion; Meet with Chief Diversity Officer
February 22
University of Georgia-Athens
Keynote, panel & breakout session
March 2019
March 11-15
CSUN Conference-California
Film screening & Discussion; Presentation on College Transition
March 28-29
Film screening with Q&A; Keynote and breakout session
April 2019
April 3-6
Vassar College Residency
Film screening with Q&A; Teaching (TBD)
April 9-11
Film screening with discussion; School visit
April 15-19
Oberlin College
Activities TBD
April 25
Harford Community College, Bel Air, Maryland
Film screening with Discussion
Do you identify as nonspeaking? as nonverbal? both? or neither?
DJ: I am nonspeaking. I am not nonverbal. In fact, I am highly verbal. I don’t use my body’s voice—my vocal chords—as my primary way of communicating. I think I will learn to talk, but I use other means to communicate because at this point it’s not easy for people to understand what I’m saying. I might look “dumb,” but I’m not. I’m just nonspeaking. Speech is assessed as not important by me because it uses a lot of my body, and I don’t have it all under control yet. For now, I like to sign and to write my ideas. I am verbal. If I weren’t, I couldn’t be writing to you right now. I have a lot to say, and I use my written language to say it. I am verbal. I can message
my ideas but not say them out loud. I am verbal.
So why is it important for people to quit equating nonspeaking to nonverbal?
DJ: Nonspeaking doesn’t mean I have no ideas or no way to communicate them. Nonspeaking doesn’t mean I can’t learn to read or write like everyone else. But I can’t if you don’t teach me how. And calling me nonverbal is like saying I can’t learn to read and write. Sometimes I look sandy, but I’m not. (Sandy is a word I use to describe when I meditate in my mind and lose my language.) Assume you are me and you sanely learn to read and write. Not nonverbal.
People use the verbal/nonverbal binary a lot, particularly when it comes to autistics. How is that
binary used?
DJ: I think people use it to desert hope for nonspeaking people. It’s part of the idea of a spectrum or of a weeding out classification. And it’s unjust because it’s segregating my people into classrooms of easy lessons.
About Me...
DJ Savarese graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College in May 2017 with a double major in Anthropology and Creative Writing. An ASAN Scholar Fellow, he was also the recipient of Oberlin's William Battrick Poetry Fellowship and their Comfort Starr Award for meritorious scholarly work in Anthropology. As a writer, he has published poems and prose in The Iowa Review, Seneca Review, Prospect, Disability Studies Quarterly, StoneCanoe, Wordgatherings.com and Voices for Diversity and Social Justice: Literary Education Anthology. A self-advocate and national social activist, he consults and presents at conferences across the country, working to make literacy-based education, communication, and inclusive lives a reality for all nonspeaking people.
