Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

by Joanne Limburg

Hardcover, 2022

Status

Available

Call number

305.42

Genres

Collection

Non-Fiction

Publication

Atlantic Books (2022), Edition: Main, 272 pages

Description

"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. An autism diagnosis in midlife enabled Joanne Limburg to finally make sense of why her emotional expression, social discomfort and presentation had always marked her as an outsider. Eager to discover other women who had been misunderstood in their time, she writes a series of wide-ranging letters to four 'weird sisters' from history, addressing topics including autistic parenting, social isolation, feminism, the movement for disability rights and the appalling punishments that have been meted out over centuries to those deemed to fall short of the norm. This heartfelt, deeply compassionate and wholly original work humanises women who have so often been dismissed for their differences, and will be celebrated by 'weird sisters' everywhere"--Publisher's description… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member rivkat

Autism and feminism, in the form of letters to Virginia Woolf, Adelheid Bloch, Frau V and Katharina Kepler. Bloch was “a German Jewish woman who had learning disabilities following a bout of childhood meningitis,” killed because of her disabilities (Limburg notes that Woolf, an anti-Semite and

eugenicist, would not have thought her worthy of life). Frau V was the mother of one of Asperger’s patients, whose own characteristics as reported by Asperger are suggestive of autism. Katharina Kepler was Johannes Kepler’s mother; he defended her in a witch trial. “Katharina had an unfortunate habit of rubbing people up the wrong way. She did this by being assertive, forthright and persistent, by preferring rational argument to tears, and by refusing to bestow sympathy on someone just because they asked for it.” Without diagnosing them, Limburg writes about their weirdness as a way of understanding autism and women. Eloquent about humilitation, eugenics, motherhood, and other topics. A key note: “Weirdness is not the same as conscious rebellion or resistance, though it may come to inform it.”

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