The Inner Voice of a 13-Year-old Boy with Autism


I discover this book after reading an article about it online a while back. At the time, I am aware of autism but don't really know what to think about it. I have no direct contact with any person with autism, or even with anyone who raises it as a personal topic. But now, after reading this book, I realize that for all the detachment I feel in my life, detachment that serves as a recurring theme in my writing, not once do I consider the idea of physical detachment. My own detachment, of course, is emotional. But the boy in this book describes a normal 13 year-old boy, one who lives his life inside a captive shell, a shell that does not allow him to convey even his most basic thoughts. Given all the times I try but fail to express myself in matters of a deeply personal nature, with the concomitant storm of frustration, I wonder how my experience compares to what this boy must go through on a daily basis. Through arduous effort and a spirit I can only aspire to, he manages to write down his thoughts so that others might understand him a little better. A gift in the form of words on the page. The sealed bottle in which he lives opens for but a brief moment to empower this remarkable boy to record, share his most intimate thoughts, a boy who lives among us, who would otherwise remain invisible, out of sight, out of mind, in this world, a world that rarely digs in to try to understand what does not fit into accepted definitions of normal, acceptable, safe. More than a simple message, this boy gives us an offering, a fiercely personal one, one that has the potential to teach us all something supreme about the world we live in, something we don't think about, really, unless we are compelled to do so. This 13 year-old boy offers to teach us about his world, a world so foreign to most of us that we couldn't possibly hope to understand it otherwise. How often do we truly get a chance to learn about such a distant place on such a personal level? I highly recommend this book.

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