Dream a New Dream: An Interview with Nefertiti Austin
I became familiar with Nefertiti Austin’s writing through Raising Mothers, a literary journal dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices where I once served as an editor. In her first book, Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America (Sourcebooks, 2019), Austin delved into her experience as a single mother raising her adopted Black son in a society that situates whiteness as the primary lens for motherhood.
Now, she’s returned with She’s Just Spirited: Parenting a Neurodivergent Child and the Diagnosis That Changes Everything (Bloomsbury, 2025). This latest explores what it’s like raising Cherish, her daughter who was diagnosed with ADHD and sensory processing disorder. As a neurodivergent person who didn’t receive diagnoses until adulthood, the story struck a chord with me, providing language that has helped me better understand myself. Austin also includes thoughtful guidance and practical resources for parents and educators who assist neurodivergent children. – DW McKinney
DW McKinney: What was your inciting inspiration to write She’s Just Spirited?
Nefertiti Austin: My daughter was the inspiration. Looking at her and thinking about what the future holds for her, how she would grow into the best sense of herself. The one thing that I wasn’t expecting to find in the process was reading about women, Black women in particular, in their 40s and 50s with recent diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder or ADHD. It was heartbreaking reading so many stories about how they struggled, how they compensated or overcompensated for what was happening with them, and how they weren’t sure how to handle it. I read the frustration and the pain in these women and I thought, “I don’t want that for my daughter.” I certainly don’t have all the power in the world, but at best I could equip her with tools.
DWM: Early in the book, you mention how our Black community often refuses to describe the issues that ail us as what they really are. We are spirited, touched, or having a spell. We tend to shy away from directly addressing our mental health. Could you talk about what the reception for this book has been from the Black community?
NA: I’ve gotten a couple of notes. There was one on Instagram from a woman who’s going through this with her son. Currently, she and her husband are in the thick of it, and she said she felt seen and she was grateful. You know this is happening with others, but even when you know other people are going through it, you still feel lonely. You feel like it’s just you. You’re the one with the problem child. You’re the one who can’t seem to get answers.
The older generations in our community don’t really acknowledge it. I don’t think they understand how isolating that is for us because we live with the reality that we can’t even go to so-and-so and say this is what’s happening in the household without being told, “Oh, they just need more discipline,” or “It’s too much sugar.” If that was the answer, we wouldn’t be in this situation. There wouldn’t be any neurodivergence if it was that simple.
DWM: She’s Just Spirited arrives at a time where our social discourse is centered around how government officials such as Trump and RFK Jr are stigmatizing autistics and other neurodivergent people. How do you envision your book being a form of advocacy in our current political and social conversation?
NA: I see She’s Just Spirited as another voice expressing lived experiences. It’s not theoretical. I’m not guessing or talking about something I think has happened. I’m not casting blame. The book is saying, from a parent’s perspective, these are some things that happen, not just in my house but in millions of homes across the world. And it’s saying—we’re saying—our children need support, and here’s how you can support our kids.
A friend of mine attended an event at a school where there was a guest speaker. My friend was a little vexed because she felt that the parents should be up on stage as the guest speakers because we were the ones with the lived experience that the speaker was addressing. We have an expertise that other people do not. I thought about it and realized she’s right. Typically it’s top down. It’s the government, it’s the doctor, it’s the psychologist, it’s someone else [telling us about our experiences]. As parents, we receive so much information with the urgency that we’ll just believe it because someone has told us to, as opposed to trusting our own experience. She’s Just Spirited has a home for parents who trust their experiences and who know that this is their real life.
DWM: The book is deeply personal, interweaving your own experiences with Cherish’s while also including research to balance it out. What was the process like for writing this book?
NA: I did get permission from Cherish because she’s young. I did speak to her in terms of how we can support other people and how we can help others. If I ever have a resource, I always want to share that resource, but then there’s this fine line between telling all of our business, which I didn’t want to do. People will read this book and think that this is what we go through every day, and that’s not necessarily the case. I’m sharing snapshots of different moments in time from our life. I always feel such a responsibility to our family, to my kids. When they get older and they do read the book, I don’t want them to feel bad or exploited or upset with me. I hope that they’ll be able to see what I see, which is that it was an opportunity to help others.
Now, that was all about the emotional work of writing about a personal issue. The actual work was [detailing] our lived experience, lots of deep dives and research, and talking to others.
DWM: She’s Just Spirited arrives at the intersection of your many selves as a Black mother, an adoptive parent, and as a parent to a neurodivergent child. How did you aim to position universality to your readers?
NA: Neurodivergence cuts across everything: race, culture, religion, and economics. That in itself makes it a universal story about how neurodivergence rears its head. It typically brings its cousins with it: comorbidity, anxiety, depression, and things of that nature. There’s no escaping it. I wanted to make sure that I weaved in race because race matters, and I wanted to address LGBTQ+ children, youth, and their parents, and write about suicide in the book and how the suicide rate for certain communities is understudied. That might not be a universal issue, but it should be a universal issue. I was trying to put as much in there to help the reader, whoever the reader was, understand how all of it really does matter to you, and if it doesn’t, it should.
DWM: Writing a book is an astounding feat. What was your recovery or self-care like after publication?
NA: I’m not good at self-care. I walk my dogs, and I was gifted a massage a week ago. I actually went. It was lovely. The one thing I have done this year that I hadn’t done in a long time was read for pleasure. I used to be a voracious reader. I’ve been reading more, and being able to read feels really good. I was slow to audiobooks, but I’ve caught up now. Between walking and listening to or reading books, that’s my base level of self-care. It could be better. I’m working on myself.
DWM: What are you reading right now?
NA: I just finished listening to Rogue Justice by Stacey Abrams. I’m in the queue for the third book, which will round out the trilogy.
DWM: Earlier in our conversation, you said that parenting is a marathon. Is there a specific section in the book where you would refer another parent to if they needed a boost in their endurance?
NA: I think the last chapter, “Dream a New Dream.” It probably should’ve been the first chapter because, as a parent, you have expectations about what parenting is going to be like. You parent your lovely, beautiful child, and then when the reality doesn’t match up with the dream of what you had, it feels like someone has pulled the needle off the record player. If we could situate ourselves early on within the flexibility of what parenting could look like, that would better ground parents for what’s in store.
I ended the book on my friend’s son, who is a lovely young man. I wanted to end on a high note to say that even a child who was born as a micro preemie, had many issues, his mother’s neurodivergent, but he found his way. He found his path, and they did it as a family. It wasn’t what his mother thought it was going to be, or what her husband thought it was going to be, but in the end, it’s beautiful. It was exactly what it needed to be.
Nefertiti Austin is a writer and memoirist. She wrote about the erasure of diverse voices in motherhood in the critically acclaimed Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender and Parenting in America (2019) and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Nation, Romper, Parents Magazine, and many other publications. She was the subject of an article on race and adoption in The Atlantic and appeared on numerous shows, podcasts, and radio programs, including The Today Show and multiple NPR outlets. Nefertiti is the proud adoptive mother of two children and lives in Los Angeles.
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