Mother's Quest Podcast

Mother's Quest Podcast


Ep 67: Smashing the Kyriarchy with Books for Littles Ashia Ray

August 29, 2019

I’m honored to bring you such a powerful and important conversation on the podcast today with a woman who has already impacted my life and my children’s life, Ashia Ray of Raising Luminaries and Books for Littles.  Ashia is a multiracial (Chinese/Irish) autistic neurodiversity rights advocate and the mother of two kyriarchy-smashing young children! As the founder of Raising Luminaries, she helps parents and educators ignite the next generation of kind and brilliant leaders. Thousands of parents like me, on a quest to tackle hard topics with our children, turn to Ashia, who through her thoughtfully researched and child-tested book lists, at BooksForLittles.com and in her private group, helps us find the best books to foster age-appropriate conversations with our kids about white supremacy, cissexism, ableism and more. By using picture books to make hard conversations easier, and to introduce complex topics simply, Books for Littles also educates grownups like me, who then go on to have ongoing discussions with our littles and our extended community.  I loved the opportunity to delve deeply into how Ashia experiences the world as an autistic adult and mother, how we can deepen our own awareness, understanding and advocacy for neurodiversity, and how we can fight all the isms, smashing the kyriarchy (the intersection of them all) through the power of books.   This idea that we don’t have to be the same to want the best for each other connects to everything that Ashia embodies. And just as my last episode with Pamela Slim and Desiree Adaway made me feel like I wanted to be a better friend, this conversation, and the micro-challenge that Ashia gave us, made me want to be a kinder more inclusive human being.  In addition to saying yes to providing captions to photos in anything I post, I also committed to providing a transcript for this episode. I hope you will not only listen, but also read through the transcript, as this conversation is so full of insights that I found myself needing to go back over again and again. I hope what Ashia shares will help you, as it did me, to see things from a new perspective and feel inspired to smash the kyriarchy in your own ways in your epic life. Much appreciation, P.S. Know someone who would love this conversation? Click forward now to pay this forward to a friend who may be interested. This  Episode is Dedicated by: Kate Amoo-Gottfried This episode is dedicated by Kate Amoo-Gottfried to her two sons, Marlowe and Miles, as well as to the group of women in her life teaching her what it means and how to be an activist: Ebele Okobi, Dr. Khadijah Costley White, Regina Islas, Ginny Kraus, and Dania Rajendra. Kate is a recovering business consultant and a life-long learner of how to make change happen and also a full-time mom of two active boys named Marlowe and Miles. She is passionate about children, mothering, education, and the plight of second-class citizens around the globe. The daughter of bleeding-heart liberals, she has spent a life-time reconciling being both “Minnesota Nice” and a revolutionary at heart.  Kate is an enthusiastic social justice warrior working to bring civilian oversight and reform to San Mateo County and across California as an organizer with Justice for Chinedu. You can read some of her writing here: Bigger and Bigger and Always Black And get involved in her civilian oversight and reform organizing here:Justice for Chinedu In This Episode We Talk About: The definition of “allistic” and how Ashia’s allistic husband helped her translate the Mother’s Quest Podcast questions into more pragmatic language Unraveling stigmas about autism and exploring how autism can be a powerful and positive part of someone’s identity  How to think about the spectrum as not linear but muti-dimensional on five different points Identifying the ‘ism’s’ and the intersections of them all known as kyriarchy  Ashia's thoughtful explanation about how classifying autistic people as “high