Compare & contrast

Compare & contrast

In Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, Dawn Prince-Hughes takes the reader through her childhood, showing that it had all the landmarks of autistic spectrum disorder: "My need for repetition extended to routes, places, and activities; when we went to the store, the cleaner, or the park I would insist on going the same way every single time." She attempts to explain why this is a necessity for individuals with autism: "Most autistic people need order and ritual and will find ways to make order where they feel chaos. So much stimulation streams in, rushing into one's body without ever being processed: the filters that other people have simply aren't there."

While other individuals described in books reviewed here this month received diagnoses within the autistic spectrum early in life, Prince-Hughes was not given a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome until she was 36 years old. She points out that professionals and the general public alike overlook "the pain and cost, the silent desperation and continued psychological struggles that high functioning autistics undergo every single day." One adaptive mechanism that Prince-Hughes used was drinking; she began in the seventh grade. She would go to parties for free alcohol. She was often the victim of attempted rape, but the "boy or man would be thwarted from carrying out a technical rape by my complete physical rigidity." By the time she was in the eighth grade she decided to avoid everyone and act as though no one else existed. Her behavior was strange enough that other girls in school were concerned. Altercations occurred in the locker rooms, and hence she was removed from physical education class and sent to sit in the library, which became her preferred location because there she could be alone.

However, Prince-Hughes was unable to escape abuse for her differences. She was seen as a "freak." The stigmata she carried included ticks, monologues, imperviousness to criticism, suspicion of authority, disdain for connections, avoidance of social interactions, obsessions with philosophy and anthropology, an odd style of dressing, and a peculiar way of speaking. She was tortured by having her head forced into the toilet, her body slammed into her locker, trash thrown at her in the hallway, her head hit with books, her face hit with spit. She was labeled and treated as though she were "crazy." Unable to bear the torture, she quit ...