Shane Neilson (Zdenka Neilson)

In the early 1940s, an anonymous patron commissioned Anaïs Nin and several of her literary chums to write erotica for a dollar a page. This man, who Nin referred to as The Collector, gave her the infuriating feedback to “concentrate on the sex” and “leave out the poetry,” but she famously wouldn’t (or couldn’t). The multi-hyphenate Shane Neilson (poet-physician-literary critic) might understand her predicament, since in his latest work of nonfiction, What to Feel, How to Feel: Lyric Essays on Neurodivergence and Neurofatherhood, he can’t (or won’t) leave out the poetry. And thank goodness for that.

On one level, What to Feel, How to Feel functions as a family history, tracing lines of neurodivergence from Neilson’s late father (not formally diagnosed with anything, but likely both bipolar and autistic), to Neilson himself (diagnosed with bipolar disorder and autism), to Neilson’s children (a daughter diagnosed with major depressive disorder and a son with an intellectual disability; another daughter is seemingly neurotypical). He writes about the violence he suffered at the hands of his father, a volatile alcoholic in whose eyes Neilson could do nothing right; he also explores the stigma his father must have faced, growing up “different” in rural New Brunswick in the 1940s and ’50s. Finally, he turns his attention to his own parenting and the ways that he’s tried to break various familial cycles: abuse, shame, silence.

But to see Neilson’s essays as being only about the fallout of family dynamics is to skim the surface of his work. On a deeper level, his essays are about what it’s like to navigate a world that is often hostile to those who aren’t, as Neilson puts it, “Normies.” He details the insidious ways that stigma has coloured his life, from how it emboldened his childhood bullies to how it has impacted him in the medical world, both as patient and physician. He explores the archetype of the wounded healer, and the ways in which existing in a state of “brokenness” can help a physician heal the brokenness of others. Rejecting certain platitudes about raising disabled children, he writes unsparingly about the challenges he has in parenting his son; in doing so, he looks at the ways he has managed to parent differently from his father, but also confronts the internalized ableism that has bubbled to the surface in dealing with both aforementioned parent and child.

What to Feel, How to Feel is split into three sections (plus an introductory essay): “Chasing Goffman,” a series of vignettes organized into two chapters that loosely apply the work of sociologist Erving Goffman to Neilson’s life, “Difference,” which explores what it’s like to be a disabled physician experiencing multiple sides of the medical system, and “Neurofathering,” which, as the title suggests, is about being the neurodivergent parent of a neurodivergent son. The latter two sections are by far the most accessible, with Neilson’s thoughts organized into more traditional essay structures; the introductory essay and first section feel less accessible, in part because the reader hasn’t become familiar with Neilson and is not yet able to apply his context to what he writes. This isn’t intended as a criticism – there is a specific joy in working through dense, thorny texts – but rather a note that the book may work best when viewed as non-linear, with the end informing the beginning.

Over the years, Neilson has carved out an important niche in the world of CanLit. This book is a worthy addition to his body of work.