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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Cabell County Public Library | 616.8582 TÖR | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Putnam Main Public Library | 616.8582 TÖR | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
An incisive and deeply candid account that explores autistic women in culture, myth, and society through the prism of the author's own diagnosis.
Until the 1980s, autism was regarded as a condition found mostly in boys. Even in our time, autistic girls and women have largely remained undiagnosed. When portrayed in popular culture, women on the spectrum often appear simply as copies of their male counterparts -- talented and socially awkward.
Yet autistic women exist, and always have. They are varied in their interests and in their experiences. Autism may be relatively new as a term and a diagnosis, but not as a way of being and functioning in the world. It has always been part of the human condition. So who are these women, and what does it mean to see the world through their eyes?
In The Autists, Clara Törnvall reclaims the language to describe autism and explores the autistic experience in arts and culture throughout history. From popular culture, films, and photography to literature, opera, and ballet, she dares to ask what it might mean to re-read these works through an autistic lens -- what we might discover if we allow perspectives beyond the neurotypical to take centre stage.
Author Notes
Clara Törnvall has been a journalist and producer since the early 2000s. She's produced programs for Swedish radio and TV, as well as written articles/chronicles for various media outlets. Her first book, The Autists: women on the spectrum, was written after her diagnosis with autism at the age of 42 and has been published in 12 languages.
Alice E. Olsson is a literary translator, writer, and editor working across Swedish and English. She has served as the Cultural Affairs Adviser at the Embassy of Sweden in London and is the recipient of a fellowship as well as multiple grants from the Swedish Arts Council. She has been shortlisted for the 2020 Peirene Stevns Translation Prize and the 2023 Bernard Shaw Prize.
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Törnvall seeks comfort in the stories of other autistic women throughout history in her illuminating debut. Moved to find answers about her lifelong anxiety and sense of social separateness, Törnvall was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 42 and became determined to correct misconceptions about women with autism, many of which, she argues, stem from a cultural emphasis on men's symptoms. She starts at the beginning, covering Russian doctor Grunya Sukhareva's first recognition of autism's congenital development in 1925 and tracing early depictions of autism back to the 13th century. Then she transitions into sections on noteworthy autistic (and likely autistic) women, including social theorist Simone Weil, poet Emily Dickinson, and climate activist Greta Thunberg, each of whom "found her place in the world, where she turn her diagnosis into something positive and play to her strengths." An insightful and involving narrator, Törnvall movingly explores how women with so-called "high-functioning autism" persisted in harnessing their abilities whether or not they lived in a time that recognized their neurotype. This winning combination of memoir and cultural history stimulates and entertains in equal measure. (Nov.)
