Stories from the other side of autism
Nowadays, from time to time, Craig is quoted in newspapers. The words are never attributed to him but he recognizes them and people in the same profession do too. Craig is a speechwriter, working mostly for the Democratic party.
So writes Kamran Nazeer of one of his fellow classmates at a now-defunct autism school in New York City in the 1980s in his recently published Send In the Idiots: Stories from the other side of autism. Nazeer writes of himself as the child “who insisted on sitting on the white stripe in the rug.” He is now a government policy advisor in Westminster, UK. Send In the Idiots: Stories from the other side of autism arises from Nazeer’s visiting four former classmates and “how they have emerged into adulthood”–and trying to understand how, through and with autism, they have become who they are today.
So much of what animates our lives — conversation, thought, creativity, friendship, politics — draws on understanding the world of other people and yet autistic people may only be able to rely on one autos, their own. By finally sending in the idiots, as Craig so often suggested [see the book excerpt for his echolalic use of this phrase], I hope to see more clearly not only the substance of their lives but the nature of the world that lies beyond their reach.
Sadly, one of Nazeer’s former classmates–Elizabeth, a pianist–committed suicide in 2002. In the current climate of curing vs. accepting autism, of autism recovery vs. autism and neurodiversity, Nazeer’s first person account of growing up and being autistic tells a “side” we can all learn more than a little from.
- Read an excerpt from Send In the Idiots
- Earlier Autism Vox post on Send In the Idiots
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POSTED IN: Books, Education, History, Stereotypes, Work
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