When I was younger, my first exposure to autism was a book. The October Child by Eleanor Spence was the CBCA winner in 1977, the year I was born. My birthday was in October. So I picked it up to read. This featured a family with a child with autism.
The view I had of autism was that it was awful for the family. Kids with autism were non verbal and had no manners. They made life difficult for their parents and their siblings. I knew nothing about a spectrum, or anything else. This was also one of my favourite books and I read it numerous times. I still have it on my bookshelf.
I was told about Aspergers Syndrome, and even that was presented as something difficult and something you didn’t want to have, and was something for little boys. I heard all the (false) arguments about how vaccines cause autism, and other negative things about autism.
Over the years, I have learned more about autism and how it’s a spectrum. I’ve also learned more about autistic people are trained to be ‘normal’. The impression being that autism is still ‘bad’.
I never once thought that I might have autism… until last year when it was mentioned by my neuropsych that I may be autistic!
The view in society that ‘autism is bad’ is starting to change, although there are still books out there that show autism as something in children, and something that is hard on families. Autistic characters are often portrayed as secondary characters and the impact of their autism is shown on the family…
Recently, I read Paws by Kate Foster. This was an amazing story, told from the point of view of an autistic kid living his life. He has the same yearning for friends and worries about moving from primary school to high school that every other kid has. It was wonderful to see a story from the point of view of an autistic character that didn’t show autism as something bad. It also didn’t show it as a superpower. It just was.
Another great book is The Me You Don’t See by Sam Matthews. This book is from the point of view of an autistic kid, telling the world about himself.
There needs to be more stories like Paws and The Me You Don’t See around to give a different impression of autism and show the spectrum of experiences of autistic people. Representation matters and having strong stories that feature autistic characters living their lives are important.
I know there are more books out there, I’m keen to discover more books. If you have any books you’d like to recommend, please let me know.
Oh, and I recently realised that I wrote an autistic character without even realising it… but that’s a whole other post.
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