1. What assumptions did you hold about autistic people --- especially those who are nonspeaking --- before reading UPWARD BOUND? How has the novel challenged, reshaped or reinforced those assumptions?

2. Which character or characters did you feel most connected to, and why?

3. Many characters in the novel are constrained by systems meant to help them --- schools, jobs, care facilities, social services. Where did the book make you feel the greatest tension between safety and freedom?

4. “You could tell that it didn’t even occur to them that we might mind being left waiting,” Walter observes. “As if time means nothing to people who have nothing but time.” He then counters this with, “I think it’s the opposite. Our time is wasted so profligately that we cherish time for what it might be, not for its emptiness.” How does the novel reframe whose time is considered valuable? Where else do you see time being controlled, wasted or protected --- and by whom?

5. Walter states, “People can be elitist when it comes to speech. If you can’t communicate, it must mean that you are mentally retarded.” How does the book challenge this assumption through structure, point of view and interiority? Which characters are most harmed by this belief, and which benefit from it?

6. After reading this novel, what do you think a “good” institution for autistic young adults would look like? How could caregivers ensure that their clients --- of varying, multifaceted sets of needs --- get individualized care? What sweeping changes (politically, societally, economically or otherwise) would need to happen before this institution could become a reality?

7. Throughout the book, dignity is shown not as something abstract but as something fragile and situational. Which characters feel most at risk of losing their dignity, and what actions --- small or large --- help preserve it?

8. “Here, without a real communication partner, I am as mute as Jorge,” Walter says. What does this reveal about communication as something relational rather than individual? Where else in the novel do systems, rather than bodies, create silence?

9. We’re told of Tom, “The same CP that makes his muscles and joints stiff as concrete also freeze his face and mouth. He can’t speak a word and can’t express emotions. He has them, god knows he has them, but he holds even the most benign feelings inside like a well-guarded secret.” How does Brown give Tom emotional agency despite --- or because of --- these constraints? How did reading Tom’s interior life shape your understanding of expression?

10. After the book ends, what do you think survival looks like for these characters? Is survival framed as progress, acceptance, resistance, storytelling or something else entirely?