I love the premise of this book, I love the letters from Limburg that make these historical women current and therefore bringing their differences and ‘weird’-ness into the modern day where perhaps they would have been better understood. Limburg was 30 when she published her debut poetry collection, Femenismo, shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection in 2000. A second collection, Paraphernalia, followed in 2007. Although the cliched, Rain Man-fuelled perception of autism suggests that autistic people are only capable of excelling in maths and science, Limburg says: “Making art is not a remotely neurotypical thing to do! I’m not going to name names. But if you think about how certain very well-known music producers have been described as obsessive and eccentric and so on, with an ability to hear things other people can’t hear… well. What is that?” One of the most interesting figures encountered in the book is Frau V. Little is known about her, including her true name. A 1944 article by Hans Asperger – among the first researchers of autism –mentions her as the mother of one of the boys he was treating in the University Paediatric Clinic in Vienna. Using the scarce details available, Limburg constructs a portrait of a woman who cares deeply about her child’s fate but also shares many traits with him. However, notably, Asperger did not consider the possibility of Frau V being autistic herself. Letters to my werid sisters er opbygget som 4 breve fra forfatteren til 4 historiske kvinder. Det er 4 kvinder som forfatteren identificerer som “werid sisters” som blev udstød pga der unormale opførsel.

Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism - Goodreads Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism - Goodreads

Limburg’s GP referred her to a specialist clinic where she was asked to fill in questionnaires which, she felt, suggested that medics were still clinging to outdated (and classically male) ideas of autism. “One question asked if I would prefer to go to the library or the theatre. I actually would prefer the library but some autistic people would choose the theatre. There are a lot of autistic actors [including Sir Anthony Hopkins], which makes sense because what are we doing to fit in, if not constantly acting? Another question asked if I had trouble understanding fiction. No I don’t, thank you very much!” The author is autistic and writes about her own stories and experiences, where she has been judged for her ‘weird’ behaviour. The author relates to the four women and finds common ground with them, she empathises and apologises for the wrongs that these women experienced. I liked how I was able to learn more about women I know of, such as Virginia Woolf and women who I haven’t and how society treated them. In this book, Joanne Limburg writes to four women in history who she calls her 'weird sisters'- women who, for a variety of reasons, were outcasted and judged- and often penalised- for their 'weird' behaviour.CW // the holocaust, eugenics, state-sanctioned murder of disabled people, suicide, bullying, miscarriage, pregnancy (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!) There is so much to love about this book, particularly for anybody already interested in any of the subject matters explored. Diagnosed with autism in midlife, Joanne Limburg finally felt she could make sense of what marked her as an outsider. In this book Limburg explores women that have been similarly marked ‘outsiders’ through history, and through writing personal letters from she to them, humanises their differences and compassionately explores what made them ‘weird’. In Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism, Feminism and Motherhood, Joanne Limburg writes a series of letters to different women in history from Virginia Woolf to Katherina Kepler. In writing to these various weird women, Limburg is not saying that these women were necessarily autistic but looks at them through the lens of autism and how aspects such as their bluntness, non-conformity, and other aspects that relate to being "different" and autistic.

Letters To My Weird Sisters by Joanne Limburg | Waterstones Letters To My Weird Sisters by Joanne Limburg | Waterstones

Bettelheim, Bruno (1967) The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self. New York: Free Press. Final note: I have Limburg’s poetry collection THE AUTISTIC ALICE on my TBR (& shelves) to read next! Although feminist and gender perspectives have been employed to analyse a number of disability-related topics, autism––and neurodiversity more generally––occupies a limited space in the literature. The experiences of adult autistic women, in particular, have been largely under-explored and un-theorised by feminist frameworks. In this lacuna, British essayist and poet Joanne Limburg’s recent book, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism (2021), establishes the foundations for a much-needed conversation between feminism and neurodiversity.Oof. What a vital read. Limburg explores autism, parenting, feminism, disability rights and society’s relationship with difference through four letters to her “weird sisters” from history. Her letter to Frau V, the (possibly autistic) mother to Fritz, one of Hans Asperger’s autistic patients, reaches far into the culture of motherhood over the past decades and I found it very affecting. I was also grateful for the nuance she brought to the topic of “autism mothers” and felt both understood and rightly challenged by her words. As Limburg writes of Woolf, the very nature and texture of their failures feels so familiar to me. Coming home, a mothering, a thought to think through. Thankful. Limburg describes movingly her own struggles as a new mother and the pressure of society’s expectations…Through such delicately intertwined experiences, Limburg quietly shouts for change.’ Times Literary Supplement Men forfatteren ser også på hendes egen lyst til at separere sig fra specifikke typer af autistiske mennesker, såsom dem der er hjerneskadet eller lignede, hun reflektere over det. Hun reflekterer også hvorfor den måde vi snakker om folk med intellektuelle handicap på er skadelige, især konceptet mental alder.

Joanne Limburg: ‘Autistic women don’t simper. We have no

Through the story of Frau V, Limburg reflects on the relationship between motherhood and autism, which is encapsulated by the infamous Refrigerator Mother theory popularised by Austrian-US psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim (e.g. Bettelheim 1967). Bettelheim’s heavily-refuted theory, which erroneously suggested that autism results from a mother’s cold and distant attitude towards her child, had and continues to have a destructive impact on many mothers of autistic children. Further, Frau V’s similarities to her son could not be read in the same way because autism was – and in part still is – understood as a ‘male’ condition. Thus, Frau V’s story represents the ways that autistic women have historically been invisible to psychiatrists and other clinicians. Psychiatry has consistently overlooked autistic women and the intersection between autism and gender oppression, with the consequences of this invisibilisation continuing to influence women’s lives. Autism has historically been considered a predominantly male condition, with discussions of autism often revolving around its manifestations during childhood, especially in middle-class white boys. Discussing Frau V’s experience brings to the fore the difficulties of being an autistic woman, but also the difficulties of being an autistic mother. Institutionalization can be a form of social death and death was what Baggs wished for. What they are coming to realize in this passage is that just because society no longer feels for you, it doesn't automatically mean that you no longer feel for yourself—nothing as merciful as that.” Limburg describes movingly her own struggles as a new mother and the pressure of society's expectations...Through such delicately intertwined experiences, Limburg quietly shouts for change.' Times Literary Supplement While surviving the decade after graduation working at an assortment of short-lived jobs (including a comically inappropriate stint as a careers officer), Limburg met her future husband – a computer scientist called Chris – in her late twenties. “Dating was horrible,” she tells me. “Autistic women don’t simper. We have no interest in making a man feel big. Chris has been my only proper ‘relationship’, as opposed to ‘encounter’.”I think it's a wonderful read for anyone interested in disability and gender, regardless of whether they're autistic. Limburg is a talented writer and each letter was cleverly crafted. I really like the choice to frame each chapter as a letter to an individual. This worked for a variety of reasons, I think in the case of Woolf in particular that while she is not typically connected to the experiences of autism, it helped that it was a letter as it gave the sense of here are the ways that you and I connect. While I am sure it could have been done otherwise, I feel it helped to make clear that Limburg is not attempting to diagnose Woolf. It also served one of Limburg's concerns which was not to repeat what has historically been done to disabled people which is to talk about them, assuming their experiences without really engaging with the individual. This is particularly important for the second letter to Adelheid Bloch who was non-verbal. It seemed to me that many of the moments when my autism had caused problems, or at least marked me out as different, were those moments when I had come up against some unspoken law about how a girl or a woman should be, and failed to meet it. It's possible to save these lives—all we need to do is get everyone to agree that it's worth the effort.”