Finding myself in prose

[white_hart]

I am reading one of the (many) books about autism I've acquired in the last couple of years, trying to work out whether I can see myself in them enough to justify identiying myself as autistic instead of just weird and a bit useless. (Answer; yes, definitely.)

Picking this one up, I wondered vaguely if "books about autism" has now become a special interest. And then I remembered how, at the age of seven or eight, I was so obsessed with reading Doctor Spock's Book of Baby and Child Care (trying to work out what I was meant to be like) that my mother ended up hiding it from me. And then later, when I started to work out that I wasn't straight, I tried to find myself in queer fiction (of which not much was available in the local library, and none of it was terribly helpful, because I had no idea I was looking for ace rep and even if I had done, I don't think there was a lot of it about in the 80s).

Later on, I mostly tried to learn how to interpret and interact with other people from books, but I've always been trying to find myself there, too.

Comments

[anna_wing]

I know at least two people who are autistic but sufficiently verbal and highly-educated to be accepted as being within the norms of their milieu. Both of them were taught formal manners (the local equivalent of "Miss Manners' Guide To Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour") and interact socially and professionally on that basis. As far as I can see, this works for them, being in a hierarchical Asian society that values educational attainment, especially in STEM subjects, since formal manners are automatically associated with high social class as well.