A disappointment. This is not a science book. In fact, the author deliberately brushes aside medical science and downplays the biological basis of autism. Price advocates for self-diagnosis and claims talking about biology is unnecessary and outdated. While it is important to value the lived experience of an autistic person, such an identity-obsessed, anti-science stance is hardly persuasive. It is clear that the book focuses on a narrow subset of autistic people: mildly autistic, educated, middle-class, especially those who are also transgender or non-binary. The author shoves different degrees of autism into the same bag and claims it is beneficial for the entire group, which, I believe, is disrespectful to those outside of Price’s focus. Dr. Devon Price is a social psychologist, writer, activist, and professor at Chicago's Loyola University who, with "Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity," has crafted an informative, insightful, and engaging deep dive into the Autism experience and, more specifically, the phenomenon known as "masking," a coping skill in which Autistic people with identifiable traits hide those traits in an effort to better blend in to a society that often rejects these traits as "odd" or "needy." Social psychologist Devon Price explains that masking is any attempt or strategy "to hide your disability." Price's new book, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity, explores masking, and how to "unmask" and live more freely.

Taking Off the Mask: Practical Exercises to Help Understand

I am so grateful for this book and Mr. Price and the people who allowed themselves to be interviewed for this book and for all that I learned. it started out good, but especially in te second half of the book I really felt this was written for a specific type of autistic person. Even tough the author supports that every autistic person is unique (which is, especially in research quite hard to deal with), the only type of autism that was represented was the "autistic nerd" that has a special interest, some talent and a hyperfocus. The constant use of "we" to represent a bunch of people that are vastly different was getting annoying. Note: the author emphasizes that lists are sometimes unclear and vague, and that women with autism can feel ‘male’ autism traits and vice versa, or any combination thereof. This is not a definitive list, but some of you might relate to these.Life Kit You aren't lazy. You just need to slow down Get to know who you really are by identifying your values A deep dive into the spectrum of Autistic experience and the phenomenon of masked Autism, giving individuals the tools to safely uncover their true selves while broadening society's narrow understanding of neurodiversity A remarkable work that will stand at the forefront of the neurodiversity movement.”—Barry M. Prizant, PhD, CCC-SLP, author of Uniquely A Different Way of Seeing Autism Gleichzeitig werden gesellschaftliche Normen und Zwänge hinterfragt. Was ist falsch an direkter Kommunikation? Ist ein starker Gerechtigkeitssinn wirklich Symptom einer Krankheit oder eigentlich etwas sehr gesundes? Und was sagt das über unsere Gesellschaft aus?

Unmasking Autism - Google Books Unmasking Autism - Google Books

Mr. Price interviews several Autistic people and there is some overlap and repetition. The repetition is annoying but as someone who goes on and on and on about something that interests me, constantly repeating myself (I don't know how my partner puts up with me), I can forgive this. Go through one day without trying to read the minds of other people and without apologizing for every action. Autistic people are often afraid of saying the wrong thing because of past experiences, and become hypervigilant about how they express themselves. Finally, just a personal gripe: this book talks a lot more about "autistic identity" than about autism itself. Those are not the same thing. If the book had been called "unmasking autistic identity" I would not have wasted the three hours of my life I spent reading it.

Unmasking Autism is at once a most deeply personal and scholarly account of the damage caused by autistic (and all) people leading masked lives, and how unmasking is essential to creating a self-determined, authentic life... This is a remarkable work that will stand at the forefront of the neurodiversity movement.' - Dr Barry M. Prizant, author of Uniquely Human Further, while the documentation is *near* normal at about 20% of the overall text, it is still on the low side, particularly relative to actively ignoring such a large part of the Autism Experience. (Normal range for documentation in my thousands-of-ARCs-in-5-years experience is 20-33% or so, and particularly well documented books - generally with less controversial and more holistic narratives - can get upwards of 40%.) While masking is employed by many autistic people, people in marginalized groups, including women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people might feel even more compelled to camouflage their disability. Which is highly disappointing. The description speaks more to this book speaking about the *entire* Autism Experience, and yet the author makes clear that they are such a racist misandrist that they actively deny that it is even possible for white and/ or male Autistics to have just as many struggles with masking as any of the other intersectional minorities the author clearly prefers. In this book, I made 97 highlights which is a record. So where do I even begin with a review?! (especially when it's going to take weeks to process everything I learned)

Unmasking autism – unlearn shame and nurture a more - NPR

Autistic people perceive all the individual trees, and stumps, and rotting animal carcasses. The thousands of small features don’t effortlessly combine into something larger for us, so we have to process all of it separately." Communicate as clearly as possible and avoid turns of phrase. Metaphors or indirect expressions can be hard to understand for people with autism. I wish the author had engaged more with disability justice as a framework/movement. it’s pretty clear that DJ is not the /basis/ of Dr. Price’s understanding of disability or autism, but it definitely feels as if the book aligns with DJ in a LOT of ways, and I feel like it deserves more than a couple passing mentions!! I feel similarly about other more radical ideas, like abolition — it was mentioned, but I wish more time had been afforded to it, and I think this book could’ve been a good venue to get more people interested in DJ and abolition, and I wish they’d taken advantage of that!For] most autistic people, we get the message from a really young age that we need to tone it down – that it's weird to be too excited and too enlivened by the things that we care about, which is so sad," Price says.