book review

Asperger\’s and Girls, by Tony Attwood, Temple Grandin, and a bunch of other experts, is a book of essays on specific issues and specialized focuses on topics that come with being born with two X chromosomes and autism.  At the end, it includes a trio of essays by autistic authors, which help put the information from the previous chapters into context.  There are thoughts and guidance on the differences we\’ve seen between male and female autistic people, on sex education and puberty, on navigating the social life of a school, on transitioning to adult life from school, and even pieces on careers, relationships, dating, marriage, and motherhood.

The book is from 2006, so it\’s unfortunately a bit dated.  You wouldn\’t think that much could change in 13 years, but it can!  At that time, it was news that autistic people could be female, and everyone and their sister didn\’t own a smartphone.  Hence, there was a strong need for this book.  Fortunately, the general knowledge of autism has increased.  Possibly less fortunately, or at least very differently, the way kids learn about some of these subjects has changed. For example, never mind school sex ed or even proactive parental teaching, most likely the first place kids learn about sex is via the Internet, either from porn sites or (preferably!) from helpful online resources like this, this, and this.  Even so, the book still contains a good bit of useful advice and insight on the subjects it addresses.

Of particular interest was the section on social groups, how to fit in, how to navigate the school\’s social hierarchy, and the model of relationship levels.  This was information I was definitely missing when I grew up, and while I didn\’t entirely agree with every sentence in the essay, I probably am not the greatest resource for this information anyway.  I spent most of school as a loner (which I was just fine with), and only had an actual friend group in high school.  I must have done okay by them, or at least tolerably, but I can\’t imagine I was anyone\’s Friend #1.

The section I had the most disagreements with was also one of the most important and useful sections: the one on puberty.  In 2006, the culture was beginning to shift, but wasn\’t yet to the point of understanding Consent, or recognizing that while you don\’t just… talk about menstruation or sex with strangers, they\’re also not subjects you should be ashamed of, and it\’s okay to talk about them with your close friends. Or… I guess random strangers in a supportive Internet environment like Scarleteen (All hail the mighty Internet, where you can sidestep your embarrassment on a subject by being anonymous).

At the time this book was written, I was in high school, and these things were beginning to change… but consent was still poorly understood.  And in fact, it\’s mentioned in this book, but not by that name, and certainly not discussed in detail, like the difference between \”no means no\” and \”yes means yes.\”  The book even counsels not talking about having a period, as if it\’s impolite to mention this basic fact of life and people will faint if it\’s brought up.  Maybe it\’s that I\’m autistic, but I personally think if you can\’t handle hearing that a person is suffering cramps or needs to use the bathroom to change their pad, you need to grow up.

A minor concern about this section was the espousing of disposable pads.  I know disposable pads and tampons are easy and convenient and all that, but they\’re incredibly expensive over time, environmentally unfriendly, and there are perfectly good reusable options for both products.  I would rather autistic girls (and all girls, really) be taught how to use these reusable options, and only rely on disposable products for emergencies.  In all honesty, the disposable pads are scratchy and annoying by comparison to the washable ones anyway.

Still, the essay is quite right in telling you to start teaching body changes, cleanliness, use of hygiene products, sex ed, and personal safety.  And not only to teach it outside school, but teach it early, and in steps rather than all at once.

Read This Book If

You want a general overview of the ways autism can be experienced differently in women and girls, and don\’t mind that some of the recommendations and information are outdated.  Teachers, parents, and even some professionals could really benefit from the information here.  In particular, I appreciated that the book didn\’t shy from talking about and instructing you how to teach about menstruation, body changes, and sex.  I really wish Future Horizons (the publisher) would update this book for the Information Age.  A discussion of consent would be an excellent addition to the book.  Regardless, it was a valuable read, especially since, even 13 years later, some people still insist on thinking autism is mainly a condition that guys have.

Extra: Resources for Women

https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergirls/

https://www.aane.org/women-asperger-profiles/

https://awnnetwork.org/

Life with a Partner or Spouse with Asperger Syndrome: Going over the Edge? by Kathy J. Marshack, is a book on handling relationship difficulties when one partner is autistic.  It\’s written by a therapist with personal experience in autism.  She\’s nonspecific, to protect privacy, but my guess is that in addition to having an autistic mother, she also married and then divorced an autistic man.  I\’ll just be very polite and say, \”it shows.\”

I try not to look up reviews by others before I read and review a book myself, because it tends to bias my understanding of the book and the author.  This particular book made me very angry within the first couple chapters, though.  I mentioned this to a friend, and he looked up the reviews… apparently a lot of autistic people got angry about this book.

I did find some redeemable points about it, though, so I\’m still going to review it.  It\’s just going to get a more critical treatment than most of what I read, because there were some very serious issues.

First and foremost, the author.  I mentioned her background with autistic family members.  This book seems like something the author wrote as part of her personal therapy.  It\’s very raw and painful at points, something like Lament for a Son, except destructive towards autistic people in parts, and written from a place of authority (PhD/therapist/marriage counselor).

The combination is rather horrifying to me.  Lament for a Son is an excellent book, written by a grieving father who claims no particular understanding of life and death.  As a marriage counselor and earner of a PhD, though, the author sits in the position of authority for the majority of this book… which, given what I\’ll mention next… is kind of hackles-raising.

The biggest point of contention I have with this book and its author is that, while sitting in that position of authority, they refer to autistic people as broken, and seem to imply that the autism is the failure point of these relationships.  Things like \”being incapable of empathy.\”  (Easy example on page 20: \”But what all those with Asperger\’s seem to have in common is the effect they have on their loved ones.  Because they are not able to empathize, they often leave us feeling alone or crazy…\”)

Not able to empathize.  Not able?  Being autistic does not mean you lack empathy.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Nor does being neurotypical mean you\’re perfect at communication and have healthy expectations for people and relationships.

I\’ve been told by a former roommate from college that she\’d assumed I had no empathy, presumably because she\’d been told that absurd factoid elsewhere.  She never questioned it until years later.  She didn\’t question it when I bought Easter candy and hid it around her room in a little Easter egg hunt.  Didn\’t question it when I made time to listen to her when she was upset or wanted company.  Didn\’t even question it when I put together music from her home church to go with her on a longer trip overseas, to help fight the homesickness while she was gone.

It was only years later, when it came up in conversation, because this kind of thing is my work, that she realized the assumption and told me about it.  It was, frankly, really hurtful.  It\’s been battered into me, while growing up, that I\’m a wrong and terrible and broken, not simply \”different.\”  This friend is not a stupid person, and has plenty of empathy herself.  But she\’d been fed that assumption and never thought to question it.  So to her, I was broken.

Needless to say, I hope, it makes me alllll kinds of white-hot furious to see that embittered, heartless, flatly wrong assumption parroted again, here, from a place of a marital counselor with a PhD.  If my copy wasn\’t a library book, I would have burned it on the spot for that vicious cruelty alone.

Once and for all, people: Autistic people have empathy.  We think and behave differently than the norm, which can mean we don\’t recognize a situation where empathy is appropriate, or which actions are desired upon recognizing situation that would merit an action.  The safest move, when not knowing what to do, is usually to do nothing.  An autistic person may also miss that a situation is upsetting to a neurotypical person, and thus be blindsided by requests for comfort, help, or a change in behavior (or in this book\’s case, the lack of requests, which grows into relationship problems…).

Second point: relationships are hard.  You don\’t need autism in the mix to have massive communication failures.  Half of all marriages in the US end in divorce.  Half.  That is far too many for it to be \”autism ruins everything.\”  For all this book\’s insistence that neurotypical norms and expectations are reasonable (and autistic ones aren\’t?), they often aren\’t reasonable at all.  If they were, the divorce rate wouldn\’t be so high.  The author may specialize in marriage counseling for people with autism or married to someone with autism, but at least in this book, they place far too high a value on normalcy.  Sometimes personalities clash.  Sometimes expectations shift.  Sometimes situations change.  And sometimes, people can\’t reconcile those changes.  That\’s life.

Before I married my spouse, we had some serious talks about lifetime type issues.  Kids, chores, balance of responsibilities, etc.  We had pre-marital counseling.  We had fights about things, from important stuff like \”who does what chores when and how often\” to \”does the toilet seat stay up or stay down?\”  I\’m autistic.  I have trouble communicating.  That makes this whole relationship thing harder.  I try to help counter it by laying out my expectations and trying to hear his expectations.  Talking about our differences.  Putting our compromises on paper, and then trying to stick to them.

Y\’know who apparently didn\’t do this?  The main example people, \”Helen\” (NT wife) and \”Grant\” (autistic husband).  The author goes on and on about Grant\’s controlling personality, his preoccupation with work, and the painful situations that result.  Not so much in focus?  Helen\’s self-martyrization and apparent inability to tell her spouse what she wants from him.  She can tell her therapist just fine, right up to and including \”isn\’t it so crazy that he doesn\’t just do this already?\”  But apparently it would be beyond the pale to actually, I don\’t know, use those vaunted neurotypical communication skills to communicate those things?

I\’m extremely unimpressed with either of them.  Helen needs to quit running herself ragged, making excuses for her spouse, acting the martyr, and staying quiet about what things she needs from Grant, emotionally.  Grant needs to detach from work to spend time with his family, learn a bit about neurotypical-handling, take his spouse and her concerns seriously, and learn more appropriate behaviors in the various situations he fails at in this book.  This morass of a situation described in this book doesn\’t need to happen, and certainly doesn\’t need to continue.

Third point: the book counsels \”detachment\” as an answer to relationship problems with an autistic spouse.  Detachment: distancing yourself from the situation and your spouse.

Y\’know what that is?  It\’s the Fourth Horseman of Broken Relationships.  Seriously, I cannot stress enough that you should not do this unless you see zero hope for success in the relationship.

I read the whole book, and the author seems to slowly redefines \”detachment\” as \”not taking your spouse\’s autism-related failings/behaviors personally\” and \”redefining your expectations for your partner and yourself.\”  That is not how English works, and it strikes me as a very dangerous path to take.  Especially, as mentioned, when speaking as a marital counselor.

There\’s a chapter on sex, too, which of course places autism as the point of failure when a NT spouse feels unfulfilled, unromanced, etc.  Let\’s talk about this for a moment.

Popular culture has a lot of messages for us about how sex should be.  The focus is pretty much always on penis-haver.  As the owner of female parts, I learned basically nothing about them, what to do with them, or how to experience pleasure with them.  To be blunt and uncouth, pop culture, sex ed class, and porn instructed me that my parts are only for being a cocksleeve, and my sexual pleasure is irrelevant.

Is it any wonder, then, that couples have so much trouble with mutually-satisfying sex?  This isn\’t an autism thing, it\’s a cultural thing.  We\’re so uncomfortable talking about and portraying sex, that all you get are bare bones details unless you do some serious searching online and get lucky enough to find some of my generation\’s work on it.

This is all massively unhelpful for any relationship.  There\’s a huge industry around satisfying unfulfilled lovers with either anatomy, with everything from sex toys to self-help books to making infidelity faster and easier than ever before.

When it comes down to it, what you actually need is for people to talk about their preferences in sex and intimacy, and be willing to try new things.  I have a friend (who is married to another vagina-haver), who tells me they pity straight couples.  In gay and lesbian relationships, there aren\’t so many norms, and it\’s basically required that you talk about what kinds of sex, touch, and intimacy you like.  Straight couples don\’t do that nearly as much, if at all, and the results of poor communication are… well, predictable.

In the end, everyone should talk about these things with their spouses.  Everyone should figure out what they like and don\’t, and give directions and follow directions.  Autistic people just need more directions than most.

The book seems to have an undercurrent of \”I can\’t believe autistic people can\’t see all these signals we put out\” even though it\’s stated repeatedly, that this is the truth.  It\’s as if the author can\’t entirely believe it herself.  It\’s also as if the author, despite being a marriage counselor, doesn\’t understand that even if the signals are put out, they aren\’t necessarily read correctly or at all by a neurotypical spouse, either.  Frankly, it boggles my mind.  If y\’all were the magical thought-reading genius-psychics this book seems to imply is normal, there wouldn\’t be so many divorces between purely NT partners.

Two quick notes before I move on.  First, this book has a section subtitled \”Can you be NT in an Aspie World?\”  This is an absurdity.  There is no Aspie world.  We are essentially aliens, strangers in a strange land.  There are only pockets in the vast NT world where autistic people may sometimes find respite to be ourselves.  Neurotypical people are the vast majority, and they shaped the world we live in.  Playing the victim because things aren\’t exactly as you\’d like them is worse than wrong, it\’s abusive.  Like we don\’t have enough to deal with.

Second, there\’s a small incident with a fictitious Justine (NT) and Edwin (autistic) having a minor argument.  Justine says to Edwin, \”You think other people should think like you, don\’t you?\”  He responds in the positive, and the book says, \”As long as Edwin has that point of view, there is no reason for Justine to argue another view.  She will lose.\”

I hate to shatter anyone\’s beautiful illusions here, but \”assuming other people think like you and that your way of thinking is best\” is literally the default human state.  That isn\’t an autistic thing.  It\’s a people thing.  What makes autistic people have so much more trouble with it is that we\’re so very different that it\’s much more of a stretch to imagine a \”normal\” viewpoint, transitioning between points of view can be difficult, and we\’re sometimes prone to black-and-white thinking.

I\’ve been pretty critical of this book thus far, and fairly so, in my opinion.  But I\’d be doing a disservice to the book and its author if I didn\’t point out that it gets some of its stuff right.  In general, the \”Lessons Learned\” bullet point section at the end of each chapter has the broad therapeutic brushstrokes correct.

Things like \”seek professional help from someone qualified,\” \”if your partner doesn\’t understand you, stop and explain yourself in simple and concrete details,\” and \”don\’t be offended if they miss your cues.  Be explicit.  Use words to explain your emotional state and your needs and wants…\”  The ugly accusations, like the supposed lack of empathy, supposed abusive tendencies, and blaming the autistic person or the autism itself for everything going wrong in a relationship, usually don\’t make it into these.  Usually.

This book is perhaps a good example of how marriages can go very wrong when autistic people are involved.  As a practicing marriage counselor, the author has seen lots of those, and the example couples seem more or less realistic.  In that capacity, it has value, and if your marriage woes resemble any of the examples\’ woes, then perhaps the book might be helpful.  If you can somehow shrug off all the other things I\’ve complained about.

Read This Book If

I try really hard to find redeemable points in a book, and if I find none, I don\’t write a review for it.  This book came to the bleeding edge of that limit.

I can see this book having value for someone who is very like the author, who I\’m guessing resembles her fictitious \”Helen\” in a lot more ways than she say directly.  People with an autistic spouse, prone to internalizing their marriage woes, rather than talking about them with their spouses, professionals, or even friends and family.  People prone to valuing the appearance of happiness, and sacrificing themselves and their needs and wants on the altar of self-martyrdom rather than admit that something\’s wrong and seek solutions.

For anyone else… find something else to read.

This book outright calls autistic people broken and incapable of empathy.  It seems to fight with itself as to whether we\’re the villains or to be pitied and helped.  Frankly, it reads like the author wants to have her cake and eat it too.  She still seems to have lot of feelings about her divorce and her autistic mother that, I would say, she put into her writing here.  But in this book, she writes as the authority, the therapist, the PhD, the person in the place of power and knowledge.  And while she does so, her bitterness poisons and twists the narrative and even the therapeutic recommendations, destroying any good the book might have offered couples in need of help.  Find something else to read.  

Reframe You Thinking Around Autism: How the Polyvagel Theory and Brain Plasticity Help Us Make Sense of Autism, by Holly Bridges, is a very short (100 page) explanation of a new theory about autism.  It features easy-to-digest language, small doodle-like pictures for illustration, and small quotations/poetry interspersed throughout.

For a book devoted to explaining a scientific theory, it\’s remarkably readable.  It\’s meant to be, of course.  The entire point of the book is to explain, in layperson\’s terms, how a scientific theory (Polyvagel Theory) and a specific type of therapy (Anat Baniel Method) combine to form a complete understanding of autism and a path forward to helping an autistic person learn to thrive.  It\’s an explanation that doesn\’t rely on specific genetic markers, air pollution, or really any single \”cause\” for autism.  But it does offer paths forward for autistic people and their families.

I won\’t summarize the theory here, as that\’s the whole point of the book and it does it better than I would, but I do think the theory has merit.  I\’m not 100% sure it applies to every single person on the spectrum, but it very well could.  In particular, I found the explanation meshed well with some descriptions in \”my life with autism\” books I\’ve read, such as The Reason I Jump and Knowing Why.  It could even explain John Elder Robison\’s experience in Switched On.  In truth, my own improvements with LENS might be explained by this theory.

I don\’t have any major \”yes, this is exactly right!\” experiences that go with this book and the theory it espouses, but as I\’m considered \”better at camouflage,\” or \”high functioning\” (ugh), it might be safe to say I\’d be less affected by the systemic interference the theory suggests is the real reason for autistic behavior.  Or I might just be being characteristically dense and missing something that\’d be obvious to someone more acquainted with the theory.  It\’s very much a fish in water being asked what \”wet\” feels like, in some cases.

The book has an interesting take on the whole \”autistic people rub neurotypical people the wrong way\” phenomenon, which I appreciated.  I tend to have a very negative way of thinking about the whole thing, but the author wasn\’t quite so cynical, and it helps to see the interaction in multiple ways.  So that\’s a highlight I found useful. 

It wasn\’t a perfect book.  I\’m not sure I\’ve yet read a book I didn\’t have at least some minor disagreement with.  The author makes generalizations about autistic people and our development and preferences that I can pretty much guarantee aren\’t going to be true 100% of the time.  It\’s just a matter of people being all different, even within a single category (\”autistic people,\” \”black people,\” \”Australian people\”).

I was also thrown for a loop by the use of the word \”autist\” for \”autistic person\” but the author\’s Australian, so that may just be the lingo there.  It\’s not particularly offensive, I just wasn\’t particularly expecting it, so it stuck out.

Read This Book If

Disability and Inclusive Communities, by Kevin Timpe, is an overview of the history of disability, its historical treatment in the Bible, the United States, and in the Christian church.  It\’s published out of a local Christian college, making it a little harder to find than most of the books I\’ve reviewed, but there\’s still an Amazon link there for anyone interested. 

At 107 pages plus a few more of references, it\’s not a long read, but it is an important one.  It is, effectively, an overview of the exclusion of disabled people in the United States, and the various facets of that: social, legal, religious, interpersonal, and systemic. 

For a book ostensibly focused on inclusion, it spends a lot of its time talking about exclusion.  Fully half the chapters focus on various types of exclusion, which is perhaps fair given the world\’s general treatment of people with disabilities. This is a book that was definitely written by an academic, but it uses fairly simple language, making it more accessible than any other piece on the subject I\’ve seen. 

The book is full of self-aware touches like that.  The author is by far the most cautious writer I\’ve ever read on the subject.  He shares some of his family\’s story, because his son is autistic and also has some other differences and challenges.  But not too much, because he recognizes that his son\’s story is his son\’s to tell (or to not tell).  He\’s also wise enough to recognize that he, as a non-disabled person, isn\’t ideally suited to write about the subject… but also that somebody has to. 

The author also doesn\’t flinch about describing the exceptionally poor treatment the Christian church has historically (and all too often, recently) given disabled people.  The reasons for this are discussed, though not in overwhelming detail.  But he quite rightly points out that those reasons rely on an incomplete understanding of the New Testament.  The church is, of course, also inclined to take on the philosophies of the cultures it lives in, which in the US, means valuing youth and health above all. 

Of particular note to me was the section on US law, which gave both the history of disability civil rights, and the various iterations of laws around accommodations and education.  There isn\’t much on the subject and I was already aware of most of it, but it helps to have it all put together in line.  Really, the same goes for the Biblical understanding of disability.  I was familiar with most of what was discussed, but it had never been laid out plainly like this. 

In general, this book and its author were knowledgeable on the subjects they discussed.  The perspective was basically right on every point.  The author even went to the trouble of consulting with various people with disabilities, to try to be sure he was getting the full picture and being sensitive to the topic.  He didn\’t succeed 100% at getting every detail of that correct, but that\’s perhaps as much on his references as it is on him. 

The one thing I wasn\’t impressed with was the comparison between the Deaf community and the autism community.  While it is definitely true that some people in the autism community believe autism itself isn\’t a disability… the general consensus that I tend to see is rather: \”in a perfect world, we might not be disabled, but because that\’s not how it is, we are definitely disabled.\”  And of course there are people with sensory sensitivities who might consider themselves disabled even if the world was perfectly suited for autistic people. 

I suppose another point of criticism here is that the book doesn\’t really offer concrete suggestions for how to improve inclusion in a church or school.  Instead, it offers broad ideas, like \”listen to your disabled people.\”

Read This Book If

Mindful Living with Asperger\’s Syndrome: Everyday Mindfulness Practices to Help You Tune Into the Present Moment, by Chris Mitchell, is a guidebook on meditation and mindfulness specifically for autistic people, by an autistic person.  At less than 125 pages, it\’s a short read, which is nice.

The main of the book discusses mindfulness, how it\’s helpful for autistic people, why you might want to start practicing it, and then, how to practice it.  My attention as a reader was quickly drawn away from that by how hyperfocused the author was on the diagnosis.

Autism Adulthood: Strategies and Insights for a Fulfilling Life, by Susan Senator, is a remarkably thoughtful parent-written book about how to create a meaningful life for an adult autistic person.  Especially, notably, a low- or non-verbal autistic person.

The book manages to handle this rather tricky subject with a surprising amount of grace and humanity.  I\’m afraid, as an autistic advocate, that I\’ve been rather put off by the way autism parents talk about their grown children.  One group in particular (whose name I won\’t mention in hopes of being more adult and graceful than several of them put together) was all but hostile to me when I attended one of their meetings.  This was before I cut and dyed my hair, too, so I didn\’t exactly scream \”young autistic adult in defiance of institutionalization and social norms.\”

Anyway, the author of this book seems to have an understanding of neurodiveristy and avoids demeaning terms like \”adult child\” and instead simply refers to her autistic son and her friends\’ sons as \”our guys\” or by their names.  It\’s not exactly descriptive, but it\’s a lot more humanizing than literally any other vocabulary I\’ve seen anywhere else.  Her story mainly involves the stories of sons, rather than daughters, but I think much of the information in the book applies to both sexes.

The topics covered by the book include housing options, employment, risk management, choosing caregivers, financial planning, and the dreaded question, \”what happens when I die?\”  Rather than the author simply opining on each subject, she went out of her way to interview and discuss these subjects with dozens of parents, professionals, caregivers, and even siblings of autistic adults.

The writing style of the book was clear and easy for me to understand.  It was both approachable and friendly, neither overbearing nor over-specific.  It provides a framework for all the subjects it touches, giving you places to start and pointers in broad brush strokes.  Because each state in the US has different laws around Medicaid and housing, this is actually a good thing.  It leads you to the right kinds of questions to ask.

I also really appreciated that this book took the time to address the issue of siblings.  Siblings can be one of the greatest gifts to autistic people.  But there\’s certain struggles and frustrations involved in being a sibling to an autistic person, and these things are sometimes overlooked in the work of supporting the autistic person.  The fact that this book offers resources to help support siblings as well as the parents is invaluable, and I very much hope that these resources become more widespread.

On a personal note, two things.  First, I appreciated chapter 6: \”The Struggles of Apparently High-Functioning Autistic Adults.\”  It makes very valid points about the situations of people like me.  To those, I\’d add one more thing.  For people like her son Nat, there\’s hopefully a village to help surround and support him.  For someone like me?  Not so much.  It\’s not that my parents didn\’t love me.  It\’s that they expected me to handle my own issues.  And I did, but I suffered for the lack of support.  If all goes well, Nat will never lack for people to ask for help the way I did.

Second, the title of chapter 8 is, \”Am I My Brother\’s Keeper?\”  This is, of course, a reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel.  After Cain killed Abel in jealous rage, God asked Cain where his brother was.  His flippant response was the quoted question.  Many years later, I read the true answer to that question in a work of science fiction.  I wanted to include it here.

Am I my brother\’s keeper?

You are his keeper, as he is yours.

Read This Book If

Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism, edited by Elizabeth Bartmess, is a set of nine essays by adult autistic people.  It\’s very much a slice of life piece.  Some authors are more philosophical than others, but each incorporates meaningful examples from their lives.  I asked for this book for Christmas, and now that I\’ve read it, I\’m not at all sorry I did.

I was gratified, while reading this book, to note the diversity in the authors and their chosen subjects.  The spectrum is a diverse place, so it behooves books like this to bring that diversity to their pages.  This doesn\’t always happen in many mainstream publishers, but as ASAN published this book, they made a point of including diversity.  And they succeeded.

One of the authors is black, and explains the kinds of complications that identity and appearance can add into a person\’s life.  Another is clearly on the lower end in terms of verbal communication skills.  Some of the authors are from other countries.  Subjects range from burnout to work, and also include personal identity, depression, fighting for quality healthcare, sensory sensitivities, and assistive technology.  All the subjects struck me as highly relevant to my life, and the lives of others.  And each person had good insight on their chosen subjects.

The book is also diverse in the tone of its essays.  Many are hopeful to some degree, but some are more matter-of-fact and neutral, or even tinged with the very depression they\’re writing about.  This, too, is true to life.  I think most people experience both hope and despair in life, and the more complications and difficulties you experience, the harder it is to hold onto hope.  If you reach adulthood without a diagnosis, the chances are excellent that you struggled quite a bit to get there, and experienced a fair bit of despair.  So while I wasn\’t overly happy reading the sadder accounts, they made perfect sense to me.

Actually, that\’s perhaps the most interesting thing to me about the essays in this book.  While the authors of these essays share my diagnosis, in some cases I have few things in common with them.  Yet each and every one of them was able to explain their actions, even ones like \”crawling into the ductwork of their church,\” in such a way that it made perfect sense given their circumstances.  We make sense.

We make sense.  Maybe we aren\’t understandable to other people.  Maybe our actions don\’t fit into the accepted norms.  But they do make sense.

Growing up, I was often told, directly or indirectly, that I didn\’t make sense, that I was wrong, and being a pain in the rear, or just being rude.  I studied and learned from those experiences, shaping myself and my behavior to be \”acceptable,\” but it was never a perfect camouflage.  And reading all these books from frustrated parents of autistic children, it\’s easy to fall into seeing a behavior, like stimming, in one particular way.  Specifically, a very negative way.  A way that assumes there\’s no valid reason to have the behavior, and seeks to stifle it until it dies.  And then people wonder why things get worse instead of better.

So, I guess, if weird autistic behaviors ever confused you, this might be a good book to read.  It makes stuff like that understandable, if you\’re willing to learn.

I loved this book.  It wasn\’t the most cheerful read I\’ve ever had, but it was highly meaningful and relevant.  It presented information and insights I haven\’t seen anywhere else, on subjects that are highly relevant to living with or around autism.  It\’s going on my bookshelf where I\’ll be able to see it and read it again.

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Atypical: Life with Asperger\’s in 20 1/3 Chapters, by Jesse A. Sapersteen, is not to be confused with the TV show of the same name.  The author, in his late 20s at the time of writing this book, shares stories of his life and childhood in an honest, sometimes impolite, but always friendly, tone of voice.  I personally think it\’s kind of odd to write memoirs prior to actually being, like, 60ish years old, but whatever makes the book sell, I guess.  (Also, I suppose I should note that the life expectancy for autistic people is at least a decade less, so maybe this is less \”you can\’t write memoirs, you\’re still young!\” and more \”it\’s a bit premature, but okay\” territory.)

When confronted with your own indelible weirdness, there are two reactions that people may have.  They may either retreat into themselves, trying to avoid attention, growing quieter, even trying to change themselves to better fit in.  Or they may instead magnify their oddities, trying to make people accept them despite the first, 5th, and 15th rejections.  You\’re not stuck for life in whichever response you take, and people may choose one route or the other depending on the circumstances.

So herein lies the most vivid difference between myself and the author: Mr. Sapersteen mainly, vigorously, chose the latter route.  By his own words, he chose to be a class clown and live out his weirdness.  It took him a very long time to learn to filter his words.  And he experienced tons of rejection in the process, from every conceivable direction.  Very few people have patience or tolerance for a person that sticks out like a sore thumb and makes little apparent effort to consider the feelings of others.

I chose, in large part, the former route.  On my own, I studied neurotypical behavior very hard, trying to figure out why I was so avoided, and learned to fit in better as a result.  I also developed depression from the stress, and an anxiety disorder from the effort of processing so much information.  Because I was quiet, I was ignored in favor of louder, more visible people with problems.

Neither of these two paths is particularly invalid, but they both come with crushing consequences.  I didn\’t get my diagnosis until I was in my early 20s, by which point it was far too late to do much but pick up the pieces of my childhood and try to forge onward into my adulthood.  The author got his diagnosis younger (though not much), and proceeded to weird out pretty much everyone he met despite having that diagnosis.

I will say that my route, which has come to be called camouflaging in some circles, is linked pretty heavily to suicidal thoughts and self-harm actions… though by the sound of it, Mr. Sapersteen spent a good period of time suffering from the latter, and perhaps the former as well.  Both of us spent a great deal of time frustrated by the cruelty and thoughtlessness of our peers, the authority figures who were supposed to help us, and the world overall.

In the end, I\’m not really sure which method is better for spreading autism awareness and teaching the general populace that we, too, are people.  Mr. Sapersteen\’s in-your-face tendencies, while modulated by adulthood, make the issue impossible to avoid… but also likely cause a great deal of resentment, even when the matter is well-explained with the diagnosis.  Whereas mine let me go mostly undetected, but people are then startled and hurt when my disguise isn\’t perfect… and also I miss dozens if not hundreds of teaching opportunities by blending in.

I suppose, like many things in life, moderation is the best bet.  As Mr. Sapersteen grew older, he learned to temper his words, and to hold back some of his less-acceptable behaviors.  As I\’ve aged, I\’ve lost a lot of patience with acting neurotypical and have proceeded to stop making as many socially-acceptable excuses for myself.  I\’ve started ditching situations that make me uncomfortable rather than suffering through them, and started calling people out on being thoughtless or outright cruel to minorities and people with disabilities.

Compare and contrast aside, Mr. Sapersteen is a very colorful writer.  He writes clearly and thoughtfully, making his points with aplomb.  Potential readers should be warned that he writes his point of view without mind for your potential discomfort.  While I find that honesty refreshing, if occasionally difficult to swallow, others may not be used to such direct and blatant discussion of the subject matter… which includes his introduction to sexuality, his experiences with bullying, and all of his idiosyncrasies (there are many).

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