"Brittney is a late-diagnosed autistic from Orange County, California. Sinking from selective mutism and regressive catatonia at sixteen, and lacking a proper diagnosis, she nicknamed her mysterious disorder, “The Invisible Muzzle”. The year was 2000. Brittney grew up in a family steeped in the ideology that trudging through hardship without complaint or support is the measure of goodness. She prescribed herself liquid courage to help loosen the grip of the mysterious muzzle. And it worked… for a while.
New California is the odyssey of coming of age, trapped under a mysterious impairment, leaving a young woman inaccessible yet forced to carry on. The poems within, full of tacky vinyl seats, white grass melting under streetlamps, and seagulls circling the wreckage, were written as a cathartic exercise in grappling for truth. And possibly, just maybe, an ocean bed of hope held wide for new perspectives, once she’s done digging her keys out of the trash."