In this episode, titled “Dear Lucy,” Halley invites activist and Faceout Project founder Sora Kasuga to the Spontaneous Mutation podcast to discuss the legacy of Lucy Grealy’s memoir, Autobiography of a Face, published in 1994.

Sora discusses her many spontaneous mutations in life and posits that we have not yet realized the social aspects of what it means to fully accept yourself as different and that might be the evolutionary key to advancing our society forward. She discusses her own ‘coming out’ story and honors the “disability doulas” who have helped her along the way, mentioning Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility anthology as a starting point.

The Music for this episode is “Dear Lucy.”

Bio: Sora Kasuga is the founder of the FaceOut Project, an activism hub and home for the global Facial Difference community to come together and collectively face out toward the world. Sora is a writer, a speaker, a model, circus artist, and face equality activist.

Sora’s experiences as a Japanese American, neurodivergent, queer person with a facial difference have informed and inspired their work in what Sora calls the “beautiful and challenging intersection of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.”

Links:

Faceout Monday Night Activism Cohort

Adult Facial Difference Community facebook group

Stella Young Ted Talk

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

Disibility Visibility - Alice Wong

FACES National Craniofacial

Children’s Craniofacial Association