Episode 214: Autistic and Black – with Kala Allen Omeiza

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Carolyn Kiel: On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Kala Allen Omeiza. Kala is a prolific author at the intersection of race, culture, and autism. Her latest book, “Autistic and Black: Our Experiences of Growth, Progress and Empowerment” has received widespread acclaim for its in-depth exploration of the unique challenges and triumphs faced by autistic individuals of minority backgrounds.

Kala is the founder and leader of I’m Heard, a nonprofit that’s channeling efforts towards the destigmatization of mental illness in minority communities. She’s also worked on various research projects on neurodiversity and mental health at Harvard, Duke, Harvard Medical, and as a U. S. Fulbright Scholar in Nigeria. She’s a graduate of Miami University and a master’s graduate of Psychological Research from the University of Oxford. An American citizen, she lives in Oxford, England with her husband Daniel, their baby boy, and their 11 plants. Kala, welcome to the podcast.

Kala Allen Omeiza: Hi, thank you. Yeah, I’m really happy to be here.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I’m so happy to have you here, and I recently read your, your brand new book, Autistic and Black, and I, I loved it, and I’m so excited to learn more about your process for writing it and and share more about it with our listeners. So, yeah, thank you.

I guess just to start off, like, what inspired you to write Autistic and Black?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Sure. I would say I think in general, just, I haven’t seen, there wasn’t a book like that before about, about being, like having so many different stories from different Black autistic individuals to come together and kind of share share what unites us, what makes us different, what makes us unique and to share it with others.

Also from coming, like in the background from academia, I would often try to write in, how I wrote the book, for example, like kind of more narrative non fiction, and I received a lot of pushback in academia. Actually, I was criticized for a lot, a lot of times for sounding too, it was always called, I was sounding too “pop”, usually. I remember in my master’s dissertation, my master’s dissertation, I I I, in the very early paragraph, I referenced I think Love on the Spectrum, actually, just into my research. And I I was told it was not scientific enough.

So I wanted to, but I wanted to have a resource that was, that would be useful for academics, but also not too, stuffy. Also like basically, so it’s a lot of academic writing where it’s, where usually more, we you get more positive feedback when it’s more stuffy and it’s more longer texts. And I wanted to make sure it was really beneficial for a light reader, a lay reader as well, those that aren’t in academia. Yeah, your everyday Black autistic individual, your everyday white autistic individual who basically that wants to learn, that wants to understand, that wants to emphasize. So that’s, that’s why I wrote it.

And just listening to when I was interviewing all the Black autistic individuals, just hearing so many stories that were so similar, especially so similar to mine and how we were, a lot of us connected by a lot of shared experiences with, with rejection and finding new communities, advocating, I, yeah, I was really inspired to. to do those stories justice. Basically, so I was really careful to write as as well as I could to make sure that all our stories come out yeah, in a way that they all deserve.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. One of the many things that I loved about your book was that you feature people from all different parts of the world. So, you know, the US and the UK, Canada, and then other parts of Africa, like Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and, and just like people from different backgrounds, different religions, cultures, different levels of, of support needs. So it’s really just an amazing anthology of, of mostly Black autistic individuals and, and some other people in there as well. And it’s just so, it, it’s just so amazing to hear stories from just other parts of the world. Like I’m in the United States, so I tend to hear stories from the United States and maybe a handful of other countries. So it’s just wonderful to hear it from other parts of the world as well.

Kala Allen Omeiza: Thanks. Yeah. It was really important to me to, to to bring voices that that we often don’t hear from, especially those living in the continent of Africa. I wanted to make sure that they were there in the book and really well represented too. So it’s definitely important, important to me. I’m happy, happy you appreciate it too.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. So how did you find and select the people to feature in your book?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Sure. I wish I could say I had this whole, like, selection process, but it was really everyone who was interested ended up being in the book, basically. And how I found those individuals was, was first I contacted people I knew. Since I was relatively recently diagnosed with autism I, it wasn’t like, there was a ton, a ton of people I knew in person, but a lot of people I knew in hindsight, such as my childhood friend’s brother, Jason, who was in an early chapter about Buffalo, New York. And a colleague I met when I was working in North Carolina, Gerald. He’s in, he’s in one of the middle chapters in part two, I believe.

I also made a call on social media as well. Of course, when you make a call on social media, a lot of, a lot of my followers and a lot of most people’s followers are people that are similar, they were similar to me, basically. They were also from the U.S., U.K., general West, yeah, were speaking autistics, for example. So I just did another step further after that, by reaching out to different organizations too, like to get a little bit more diverse sample, like the Autism Society of South Africa, autism society, a Twitter account called Autism in Africa, and and with some organizations like Neuroclastic, for example, to to be introduced to like other non speakers and those living in the African continent and just other individuals that I wouldn’t have necessarily met, as well just from hashtags or on social media.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that’s really great. I’m so glad that everybody, it sounds like so many people were interested and that you were able to kind of bring everybody together.

And yeah, and I also really love the way that you organize the stories in the book, because for the most part, I think every chapter has usually two stories that have a common theme, so you kind of go back and forth between two people’s stories. And then at the end you add your, part of your own experience and your own story in there as well. So I just think that’s just a really powerful way to communicate a lot of the similarities that that autistic people have, no matter where they are in the world and sort of across our, our experiences and backgrounds.

And I also really love the way that you tied in the concept of Ujima from the Swahili word around collective work and responsibility, because it really seems like community is, is a big theme of the book overall as well. Yeah. How did you pick that concept of, to use Ujima as sort of a, a, a thread throughout the book?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Sure. So I thought that using Kwanzaa terminology Ujima was a great way to unite us, all of us in the diaspora together, all of us that they are living in Africa and who are living outside of Africa, just all of us having African ancestry, I thought it was, I thought a Kwanzaa principle was a great way to, to unite all of us.

But I, I honestly, I didn’t ultimately intend to use like Ujima throughout the entire book. I primarily, it was in my outline to write it as the introduction, actually. And I, when, as I was writing the book, I realized that it was really important to make sure it was, it was, what’s the word? I would say, it was emphasized, that’s the word. There was a more emphasized to like, just to bring out the community aspects of ways that, yeah, I could have for example, I could have, I could have better looked out for my community. Ways that I looked out for my community well. Ways that others looked out for, for me, or, or other people in my community well. That’s why I, I wrote I, I tied it in after, in between each chapter in, in my life to show, to show some examples and to better, to better emphasize the points from, from previous chapters about community.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, it’s a really nice way to tie all the stories in the book together and yeah, it really brings that, that point of community across. Absolutely.

In the process of writing Autistic and Black, what did you learn that surprised you the most?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Again, I think, just how similar our stories were. I, I remember just thinking how much of, how much of a blessing it was for me to fully understand to what extent I wasn’t alone, I’m not alone and I didn’t really, I think. I didn’t really understand that until I was interviewing. And I’m sure, and from the feedback I’ve been getting, it seems a lot of people didn’t really understand that until they’re reading the book. Even all those featured didn’t really yeah, they, they really felt really cathartic, like, while they’re, while they’re reading others that were featured in the book as well.

I, I, I always. I, I wish that I had that, I wish I had a resource like that when I was a little bit younger, particularly when I was in high school or when I was in North Carolina and when I had the when I had a really bad meltdown, and I lost a lot of friends because of it. I, I wish I had a resource like that. A resource like Autistic and Black to, to feel a little bit more understanding and and the cultural and community aspects as it pertains to like Black, the Black experience. But, so, yeah, it was really I would say that was like a reason why I was so motivated to do everyone’s stories justice when I was writing, because I just knew how a blessing it was for me to hear their stories. So I wanted to make sure everyone, as many people as possible were blessed to read our stories as well. So I think that was probably what surprised me the most is how, yeah, how similar we were, even from different different backgrounds, different cultures, we were still really similar.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like a common theme with a lot of autistic people, particularly people who discover it later in life is just that feeling of like, you’re the only one and just sort of always feeling alone. And then it is really kind of exciting and refreshing to find other people who like have shared commonalities in your own experience.

Kala Allen Omeiza: Exactly. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Were there any, I mean, there’s so many amazing, all the stories in your book are amazing, but were there any particular stories that you shared in your book that really moved you the most?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Hmm. I would say Meeting Akha and writing about Akha’s story. Akha, who’s a 12 year old nonspeaking individual from South Africa. I would say his story moved me the most, especially when I was interviewing him. I was, I just remember when I was when I was speaking with him, I was so happy for him and his family. I also talked to his mom as well. But he was able to communicate on his letterboard and was able to express his thoughts and his feelings. Yeah, he’s a very, yeah, very eloquent, very wise yeah, boy.

And he even acknowledged that, that if it weren’t for his letter board, if he he wasn’t able to have a outlet for him to communicate, that others might not have given him a chance at all. They might not have assumed competence with him. And and so he’s thankful for for him to be able to communicate that way. And I’m, yeah, I’m really grateful he had that. And and it was definitely a learning opportunity for me as well as as a speaking autistic to to talk more with a nonspeaking autistic. And I think I was very moved by that, by his story and just meeting, meeting him and his family.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I know me also, I’ve learned so much from other nonspeakers as well and just communicating with them. And yeah, again, it’s really exciting to, to share those stories and, and really important to be able to, because there are so many people who, who don’t assume competence. So it’s it’s great that it was in your, in your book and really highlighted. Yeah.

And you know, you’ve written multiple books before you wrote Autistic and Black. Was this the first time in a book that you’ve written about your own experience as a Black autistic girl and woman? And what was that like sharing that experience in a book?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Yeah, so, yeah, it was my first time writing about about myself. Basically, I wrote two novels before. And a lot of people used to, a lot of people assumed that like, for example, especially my first novel, Afrotistic, a lot of people assumed that the main character was me when I was younger. I’m like, no, no, it was not. It was not me. Like, I wish, I wish, I wish I was as cool as as Noa.

Basically, so actually, writing about myself and my own experience was, it was interesting. I realized it was probably the part of the book that I needed to I needed, help editing the most, I believe. I, especially I would say particularly in the most recent, the most recent memories. So the later, the later Ujima chapters, for example I struggled a bit to parse out what was necessary to add in the book versus what was more necessary to just keep in my journal. So that was a little bit difficult to to to put more recent thoughts on paper.

But, and it felt, I did feel a little squeamish about being vulnerable, being really vulnerable on, on paper, knowing that it was going to be shared publicly. But I, yeah, I was definitely inspired and encouraged by everybody that I interviewed before me, before me that were also putting their stories out. So and I wanted to add to it too, to add my own story, add my own, add my own perspective with, with my background, with my religion, with my with, the way I interact with friends, what I want in friends too. I wanted to make sure my, my point of view is out there too. So I, I tried to be courageous about, about writing it, even though I had to make sure I, I parsed that as much as I could to make, make things more relevant.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, it’s, it’s definitely a very vulnerable place to be to share so much about yourself in a book. And, Yeah, I, I, I think that that, you know, it really enhances all of the stories and helps tie them all together. And I’m wondering, was it kind of healing or cathartic in a way to be able to go through that process of writing your own story publicly like that?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Yes, yes. In a way it was, it especially just to, to to not only think like, wow, I, I really relate to for example what Olivia in Birmingham England went through, for me to actually write something on paper that was really a similar experience, I think really hit home for me when I was writing that this is, that, that we, we do have a lot of similar experiences and similar inner thoughts. And so I, I think in a way it was it it was, it was a nice healing opportunity for me too.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s great. Wonderful. So what kind of feedback have you gotten so far about the book?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Sure. I’ve gotten really, really neat feedback from I, so earlier I was saying how I was hoping that it was a resource for both academics and non academics alike. And I’ve been really, really thrilled to get feedback, positive feedback from academics and non academics alike, just a lot of people. It’s been really neat to to see it in places like, for example, the Mansfield College Library at Oxford highlighted it on their new bookshelf, on their like, on their new release section, which was, which was such a dream come true, just being highlighted in Oxford College like that.

It’s probably the most attention I’ve gotten for one of, for my, one of my books. So it’s been, it’s been really overwhelming, but really exciting to just connect with so many readers, so many researchers, other Black autistic individuals, other autistic individuals of all, of all cultures and colors. And yeah, just organizations that have reached out. It’s been, it’s been a great experience and I’ve been really appreciative of the positive feedback from people of all walks of life.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, that’s really great. That’s awesome.

So like, where can people go if they want to get your book or, or learn more about your work? Because you do some, so much other work around, you know, mental health advocacy and, and research and all of this. Where, where can they go to learn more?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Sure I think, well, first off, for the book, I think the best way is of course there’s platforms like Amazon, but really anywhere books are sold online, such as like Blackwell’s or Barnes and Noble’s, you can, you can find the book there. The book is titled Autistic and Black.

I think the best way to support me would be subscribing to my newsletter. You can find it on my website at KalaOmeiza.com. I guess it’s neither either first or last name are intuitive spelling. So K A L A O M E I Z A dot com. You can see my newsletter link there. You can also follow me on platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram. You can just search my name search my name, Kala Allen Omeiza, and hopefully it should come up.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay, cool. So I’ll, I’ll put a link to your website so that people can go there, they can, I’m sure they can learn more about your book, they can sign up for your newsletter and connect with you on socials from there as well.

So yeah, Kala, it’s, it’s been great chatting with you and again, congratulations on your, your brand new book, Autistic and Black. It’s definitely going to have a big influence it sounds like within academia and outside of academia, really for everybody to just learn more about, more about Black individuals’ autistic experiences.

Is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or any other ways they can help or support your work?

Kala Allen Omeiza: Yeah, I guess I’ll just reiterate that yeah, subscribing to my newsletter would be the probably the best way to support my work. I, yeah, my newsletter, I’m focusing on highlighting other neurodiversity advocates work, books and even podcasts like yours, for example, just like highlighting like what, yeah, what the community is doing, basically in my newsletter. So that’s probably the single best way to to, to learn and and to, and to support. It’s just really, it’s like a really important metric for for authors. And I’m really excited to, yeah, to to expand in future emails.

Carolyn Kiel: All right. Awesome. All right. So, yep. We’ll put the link in there and yeah, subscribe to your newsletter. And yeah, just really excited to learn more about what you’ll be doing and who you’ll be featuring and all the work you’ll be doing going forward in the future. So yeah. Thanks again, Kala. It’s been great talking with you today. Thanks for being on the show.

Kala Allen Omeiza: Yeah. You as well. Thank you very much.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give it a shout out on your social media, or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at Beyond6seconds.net. Until next time.