Two New Autism Books
Two recently published autism books are #16 and #17 in Amazon.com rankings as of the writing of this post, Jenny McCarthy’s Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism and John Elder Robison’s Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s. McCarthy’s book (which is also #4 on the New York Times Bestseller List for hardcover nonfiction) is memoir with a “roadmap” of how, thanks to behavior therapy, a special diet, and supplements (and candida wipe-out via anti-fungal therapy), the author indeed “healed” her child from autism. Louder Than Words is another book in the tradition (if one can call it that) of books by parents of autistic children that offer the latest “how I cured my child from autism”: Others in this genre include Catherine Maurice’s Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family’s Triumph Over Autism, Karyn Seroussi’s Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder: A Mother’s Story of Research & Recovery, and Barry Neil Kaufman’s Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues.
Robison’s memoir is of a life lived with Asperger’s—though the author did not know he was on the autism spectrum until he was 40 years old, after being labeled a “social deviant” in his teenage years and creating guitars for KISS; similar accounts are those by Daniel Tammet in Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Asperger’s and an Extraordinary Mind and, too Temple Grandin’s books, Emergence: Labeled Autistic and Thinking in Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism.
They are all books about autism—though the ones in the first paragraph, like McCarthy’s, might more properly be termed books about how to not have to live a life with autism, and how to have a life without autism.
Books like Robison’s, Tammet’s, and Grandin’s, and writing by other autistic adults like Sue Rubin (featured in the film Autism is a World), suggest that a life can indeed be lived with autism, and lived well. And this is good to hear since, as far as I can tell, I will (I hope) be living the rest of my life with Charlie, and so with autism.
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POSTED IN: Adulthood, Autism Lit, Books, Movies, Treatment
25 opinions for Two New Autism Books
Helene
Oct 2, 2007 at 3:15 am
Literature can be a road to help us understand what is happening to ourselves and our children, therefore good literature is so important, just like Kristina’s blog is. I would like to recommend norwegian author Halfdan Freihow who wrote *Dear Gabriel*, and is a fathers account of living with a child with autism. It is a very moving account, also as a general read, not just for people invlvoed in the spectrum. Can be strongly recommended!
Casdok
Oct 2, 2007 at 4:02 am
I wouldnt live without my sons autism either.
Minnie Matta
Oct 2, 2007 at 9:23 am
“might more properly be termed books about how to not have to live a life without autism.”
don’t you mean with?
Cliff
Oct 2, 2007 at 10:32 am
No, she means without, and very purposefully.
Cliff
ange
Oct 2, 2007 at 10:41 am
I somehow ended up on Robison’s blog (http://www.jerobison.blogspot.com/) and was interested to find out that his brother wrote Running With Scissors, which I read a few years ago. I’m looking forward to the read.
Cliff
Oct 2, 2007 at 11:03 am
Oh, actually, Minnie, you’re right. I totally missed the double negative.
Cliff
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 2, 2007 at 11:09 am
Minnie, thank you! You’re a good reader.
Leila
Oct 2, 2007 at 11:38 am
My son was tested for yeast (we used his regular pediatrician and medical group’s lab) and it came out negative. I wonder how many autistic kids are taking antifungals for nothing, especially now after this McCarthy DAN propaganda.
That is not to say that all autistic kids are like mine; I just think that people should ask their regular doctors (and not DAN) to get their kids tested, before taking them to quack clinics and labs.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 2, 2007 at 11:46 am
A colleague just stopped me in the hall and asked if I had seen Oprah……..
KC'sMommy
Oct 2, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Oh how I despise the “how I cured my son of Autism” sentence.
My grandma called me and said, “did you see Oprah?” “Maybe you should try what that lady tried with her son?”
Totally makes me feel like everything I have ever done for K.C. amounted to zero.
I had to quickly remind her of all the progress he is and has made.
She means well, but sometimes her words can hurt.
Leila
Oct 2, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Kristina, and when will it end? People are still e-mailing me the links to People Magazine, taping the awful shows where Jenny appeared so they can give it to me… I usually smile and thank them politely, making a point to say there’s a lot of things I don’t agree with on those Jenny appearances, but my husband is not as diplomatic and tells people that he hates that b***s***.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 2, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Selenium, cod liver oil, and I couldn’t think of how to say that I’m kind of immersed in all of this…..
gettingthere
Oct 2, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Ah well. Time for me to get started on my very own saga of “How my autistic child cured me of oughtism”. Life changed for the better for both of us when I stopped insisting that he “act normal” at all times in public. As he wisely pointed out: “I won’t be me without the very good bits, the bad bits, the embarrassing bits, and the ordinary bits.”
long day's journey into acceptance
Oct 2, 2007 at 1:55 pm
It wasn’t until last week that I learned Robison, who I’ve known of on-line for a long while it seems, was not dx’d till 40. SO, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the title is a bit misleading (to me). I had long assumed he’d had an autism dx. back in the 60s. I had a closer dx. to autism back ‘in the day’ than Robison, so now I see little reason (at this juncture) to read his book. Plus, I can’t get over how misleading the [sub-] title is ….
Cliff
Oct 2, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I understand what you mean, Leila. It’s very hard to hear “you should have just taken the yeast out of your body and you’d be a good person” and not wince a little from an autistic perspective, and not that different it seems from the parent.
Cliff
Leila
Oct 2, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Kristina and KC’s Mommy, exactly, they come to us as as if we haven’t known about those “treatments” advertised by Jenny for years, and used our judgment and knowledge to decide it wasn’t right for our kid (or else we tried it and it didn’t work).
My mother-in-law still hints that she thinks my son should go GF/CF. Like the other day, after watching Jenny on Oprah, she said she loves almond milk (I told her I tried it, and thought it tasted awful). I tell her that my son has zero food intolerances and allergies, has no yeast overgrowth and this all has been shown on lab tests (plus my boy has no intestinal problems).
Leila
Oct 2, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Cliff, I just hope real science will catch up and flood the media with real data to quash the silly theories out there, which are misguiding parents and the general public to believe all sorts of myths regarding autism, stigmatizing autistic people.
Julie
Oct 2, 2007 at 4:54 pm
It is frustrating to see only one side of the issue in mainstream media. I am soooo tired of the well meaning calls that interupt my day where I have to explain again and again that these therapies are not proven and have no scientific basis and that her father and I do not believe that autism is something that can or should be cured. It takes time away from my day and drains me to have to explain that the celebrities are not the experts just because someone put them on TV.
Melanie, Bobby's mom
Oct 2, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Ditto on everyone telling me about the Oprah show and McCarthy’s other appearances. But since the people who have been mentioning the show to me really do know and love my son, I give them all a pass :) And all the buzz has reminded me that it’s been quite a while since we evaluated Bobby’s overall program, and maybe it’s time to add something else. Dietary changes are non-invasive, and if the stimming reduces even a little we’ve come out way ahead. He’s gonna break someone’s fingers as hard as he slams doors these days!
Judith Ursitti
Oct 2, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Need to laugh about the whole J-Mac thing?
http://knudsensnews.blogspot.com/2007/10/jenny-mccarthy-to-host-autism-symposium.html
Sorry … just couldn’t resist.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 2, 2007 at 8:40 pm
So now there’s a new J-Mac…….
Judith Ursitti
Oct 2, 2007 at 8:45 pm
With apologies to Jason …
Misha
Oct 3, 2007 at 4:31 am
I’ve been fortunate not to have my family come to me with talk about these treatments. We’re all on the same page about my son’s autism. One of my friends has, though. She knows how I feel about biomed and chelation but she seemed to think if she told me she saw Jenny on Oprah talking about it that I’d listen. I tried real hard not to be rude about it but she found out it would have better to keep her mouth shut.
And speaking of Jenny. Something I found out through one of my local groups is that Dr. Jerry Kartinzel, Jenny’s son’s DAN! doctor was supposed to be on Good Morning America Wednesday (Oct 3rd). Apparently it’s been postponed to a later date now.
What do a former MTV-VJ, a machine aficionado, and a Grinnell professor have in common?
Oct 8, 2007 at 1:54 am
[…] has been a lot about McCarthy’s and Robison’s recently published book but (to my thinking) one reason for writing a book is that it is someting more lasting, more […]
Autism Vox
Nov 2, 2007 at 11:50 am
[…] or while waiting (in line; to pick up your child). A lot of autism books came out this year, like these two in September, and the novel I rechecked out. In the first part of this year, two books came out by […]
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