Q & A with Prof. Grinker in US News & World Report
George Washington University anthropology professor Roy Richard Grinker’s important book, will be published next month. An interview with him about autism’s many meanings appears in the January 15th US News and World Report; you can read it online today. The questions posed to Grinker, father of 15-year-old Isabel, are familiar:
- Why has the number of people diagnosed with autism increased so that some talk of an “epidemic”?
- Can those with very mild symptoms of autism still be considered “autistic”?
Grinker’s responses to these questions offer new answers, and insights, into how autism has become “unstrange” in our own culture, and how this can only benefit autistic persons today.
……speaking as a father, the expansion of the term is wonderful, because my daughter is not treated as an alien who should be institutionalized. If you go to India or South Korea and see how many people with autism are hidden away, you see how far we’ve come.
His response about how it is still (as the US News reporter phrases it) “not easy raising an autistic child” struck a nerve in me:
You never know what kind of person you’re going to encounter. Every time Isabel enters into a situation and you have people who want her to be exactly like everyone else, we know we’ll get that phone call. You really do always have to fight for your kid.
At a time when much of the discussion about autism seems to focus on autism as the “epidemic of our generation” and on autism as a “mystery,” Grinker offers a thoughtful, and even optimistic, perspective on how far we have indeed come in understanding autism.
More information about the book Unstrange Minds can be found at Unstrange.com.
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