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Nov. 12th, 2010 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThinking in Pictures: And Other Reports From My Life With Autism is much more interesting than a book that is essentially the autobiography of the world's foremost livestock-equipment designer has any right to be. (This is another nonfiction book that was passed along to me by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
genarti.) Temple Grandin writes very clearly and honestly about her interactions with the world as a non-neurotypical person, and how this has affected her life and her career, and things that she thinks might be helpful to other people on the autism spectrum; it's not a book I would have picked up on my own but it is, I think, valuable to read.
That being said, I really, really wish it did not have the introduction it did; it bothered me all the way through the rest of the book. Because while Temple Grandin herself is all about neurodiversity, Oliver Sacks in the introduction spends a lot of time exclaiming about how amazing it is that Temple Grandin can almost interact with the world like a normal person! and on first meeting her you would hardly know she was autistic at all! An autistic person can have a sense of humor, they can have "moral and spiritual depths," WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT. It's all very weirdly othering. I am not really qualified to talk much in-depth about the autism spectrum except from the perspective of a friend, and I realize that people on the autism spectrum often approach emotion a very different way, but it would not really occur to me to be shocked, shocked that a person with Asperger's is NOT IN FACT A ROBOT? I think that is probably kind of offensive! Especially coming from someone who has in fact made his career out of working with non-neurotypical people!
I know Oliver Sacks is quite famous and his books are supposed to be very witty and clever, but if this is the way he generally talks about his patients I don't think I'll be reading them.
genarti.) Temple Grandin writes very clearly and honestly about her interactions with the world as a non-neurotypical person, and how this has affected her life and her career, and things that she thinks might be helpful to other people on the autism spectrum; it's not a book I would have picked up on my own but it is, I think, valuable to read. That being said, I really, really wish it did not have the introduction it did; it bothered me all the way through the rest of the book. Because while Temple Grandin herself is all about neurodiversity, Oliver Sacks in the introduction spends a lot of time exclaiming about how amazing it is that Temple Grandin can almost interact with the world like a normal person! and on first meeting her you would hardly know she was autistic at all! An autistic person can have a sense of humor, they can have "moral and spiritual depths," WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT. It's all very weirdly othering. I am not really qualified to talk much in-depth about the autism spectrum except from the perspective of a friend, and I realize that people on the autism spectrum often approach emotion a very different way, but it would not really occur to me to be shocked, shocked that a person with Asperger's is NOT IN FACT A ROBOT? I think that is probably kind of offensive! Especially coming from someone who has in fact made his career out of working with non-neurotypical people!
I know Oliver Sacks is quite famous and his books are supposed to be very witty and clever, but if this is the way he generally talks about his patients I don't think I'll be reading them.
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Date: 2010-11-12 04:24 pm (UTC)(I mean, that wouldn't necessarily mean that he done good or anything, but.)
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Date: 2010-11-12 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 04:31 pm (UTC)