Lately, I’ve been reading Chloe Hayden’s book Different, Not Less and it’s highly informative. She also gave an excellent TED Talk recently.
The past couple years, I’ve read a few other books in this genre/niche of “I’m autistic, here’s a memoir about my life, as well as tons of research and information about what it means to be autistic” as part of my own journey of learning I’m autistic.
But if you didn’t know, there’s currently an RFK Jr. in the U.S. government who seems to have done no research whatsoever and is making weird, bizarre claims about autistic people.
So I guess here’s some book recommendations? So you can be smarter than RFK Jr? If you weren’t already which you probably were (did you see the thing about the brain worm? Is he okay?) but anyway, onto the books…
What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic by Annie Kotowicz (this book feels like a newbie’s introduction to life after getting diagnosed.)
Strong Female Character by Fern Brady (Fern Brady is a comedian, though honestly this memoir gets somewhat dark. I did appreciate the discussion about alexithymia–the difficulty of identifying one’s own emotions–and the raw depiction of meltdowns and learning how to manage them.)
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Devon Price has a PhD in applied social psychology, and this book is a heavy hitter in terms of research, what unmasking means, and how a more autistic society could look.)
And I’ll leave it that–but if you know of more excellent, informative books about autism, I’d love to hear about them. Aside fom that, how’s your life been? How’s your brain? 👀 Have you read any good stories lately?
***
ps, find my published novel at this link
Jordyn Saelor 