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Out with It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice
A fresh, engaging account of a young woman’s journey, first to find a cure for a lifelong struggle with stuttering, and ultimately to embrace the voice that has defined her character.
A vividly powerful memoir of a young woman who fought for years to change who she was until she finally found her voice and learned to embrace her imperfection.
Imagine waking up one day to find your words trapped inside your head, leaving you unable to say what you feel, think, want, or need. At the age of seven that happened to Katherine Preston. From that moment, she began battling her stutter and hiding her shame by denying there was anything wrong. Seventeen years later, exhausted and humiliated, she made a life-changing to leave her home in London and spend a year traveling around America meeting hundreds of stutterers, speech therapists, and researchers. What began as a vague search for a cure became a journey that debunked the misconceptions shrouding the condition, and a love story that transformed her conception of what it means to be normal.
Shedding light on an ancient condition that affects approximately 4 million people in the United States and 60 million people worldwide, Preston has assembled an anthology of expertise and experience. In addition to specialists in the field, she interviews celebrities, writers, musicians, social workers, psychologists, and financiers—men and women from all walks of life battling their difficulties with speech. A heartwarming memoir and a journalistic feat, Out With It is more than a chronicle of one of the most prevalent speech problems in the world; it’s a story about understanding yourself, and learning to embrace the voice within.
A vividly powerful memoir of a young woman who fought for years to change who she was until she finally found her voice and learned to embrace her imperfection.
Imagine waking up one day to find your words trapped inside your head, leaving you unable to say what you feel, think, want, or need. At the age of seven that happened to Katherine Preston. From that moment, she began battling her stutter and hiding her shame by denying there was anything wrong. Seventeen years later, exhausted and humiliated, she made a life-changing to leave her home in London and spend a year traveling around America meeting hundreds of stutterers, speech therapists, and researchers. What began as a vague search for a cure became a journey that debunked the misconceptions shrouding the condition, and a love story that transformed her conception of what it means to be normal.
Shedding light on an ancient condition that affects approximately 4 million people in the United States and 60 million people worldwide, Preston has assembled an anthology of expertise and experience. In addition to specialists in the field, she interviews celebrities, writers, musicians, social workers, psychologists, and financiers—men and women from all walks of life battling their difficulties with speech. A heartwarming memoir and a journalistic feat, Out With It is more than a chronicle of one of the most prevalent speech problems in the world; it’s a story about understanding yourself, and learning to embrace the voice within.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2013
39 people are currently reading
776 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Preston
1 book26 followersKatherine Preston is the author of Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice. At the age of twenty-four she left her home and career in London and moved to America to conduct research. She slept on strangers’ sofas, drove across the country and interviewed over a hundred different stutterers, therapists and researchers to finally face her fear of stuttering. Her first book, Out With It, chronicles her journey into finding self-acceptance.
Today she works as a freelance writer, motivational public speaker and is the Creative Director and Co-Founder of the cell phone recycling business ExchangeMyPhone. Raised in England, Preston now lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Today she works as a freelance writer, motivational public speaker and is the Creative Director and Co-Founder of the cell phone recycling business ExchangeMyPhone. Raised in England, Preston now lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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September 7, 2013
I've stuttered since first grade. My relationship with that part of myself is oceans better than it used to be, though that doesn't mean I'm completely at peace with it. The little girl who was too afraid to assert herself for fear of sputtering all over the difference between what she wanted to say and the tangled ghost of approximation she had to settle for quickly supplanted the even younger girl who had no problem hamming it up with improvised songs and dances on home videos; the adult she grew up to be, on less fluent days, automatically apologizes for stuttering and will feel a wave of relief no less powerful than the countless ones before when her conversational partner says they've never noticed. The wild dream of unblemished speech is just not a realistic one after a certain point, so acceptance is the only viable option: Realizing that one merely chooses to live in fear of their own voice and can just as easily choose not to is a moment nearly as empowering as sudden fluency.
Speech therapy was presented as an option exactly once, in what felt like an ambush when my elementary school's speech therapist pulled me aside during class a year later. Not being able to withstand the internally embellished embarrassment of a public outing as someone needing to be fixed while also imagining all the ways I could be reprimanded for interrupting class, I insisted I didn't need help just to end the inquisition as quickly as possible; I now have to assume that academic professionals wouldn't let a clueless seven-year-old have the last say, and that my parents (who, after asking my pediatrician how to treat my stutter, summarily ignored his advice and chose to make fun of me for years to come -- which did have the benefit of making the surprisingly few schoolyard jabs roll right off my otherwise too-sensitive self) or whatever teacher initiated this encounter didn't see the worth in pressing on.
The first time I decided I was ready to try speech therapy was in high school. I only wound up seeing the school's specialist a handful of times, as the sessions pretty much involved me reading aloud from whatever book she had available and her declaration that I didn't have a problem. At that point, after nearly a decade of living with a stutter, I knew my own patterns well enough to be frustrated with a seemingly optimistic prognosis: I have good days and I have bad days, with the problems mostly flaring up at double consonants or when speaking on the phone, and rarely occur when a book or a script supplies my every word.
I doubt I'll ever work with someone to "fix" the way I talk just as much as I doubt the possibility of shedding the verbal flaw I've sported for more than two decades, as I am now more interested in what I can do to encourage understanding but have been unsure of what exactly my options are. So when I stumbled upon an article about this book, I had two immediate reactions: "I absolutely need to read this" and "I absolutely should have written this." (Later, "Why wasn't I interviewed for this?" would come, but fleetingly and only half seriously.) I have never spoken to another stutterer and certainly never had a chance to ask the probing and probably eagerly invasive questions I've been dying to lob at someone else who knows what it's like to live with an invisible hand at one's throat: This book was that chance. Here is someone offering up not only her own experiences but also those of so many others.
Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice is a story in two parts. It is an unflinchingly honest account of its author's nearly lifelong battle with her stutter as well as a study of how the condition manifests itself in others, the schools of thought proposing various coping methods and solutions to hide behind, and the search to understand just what exactly causes this particular speech impediment. It is the need for inner reflection happening in tandem with outward-focused curiosity that turned Katherine Preston's debut into exactly what I expected a stutterer's memoir to be, as the affliction makes it impossible for a person to remain in ignorance of how his or her faltering speech affects and is perceived by every single person who serves as our audience. To stutter at an early age is to find out what happens when childhood's blissful lack of self-awareness is replaced, with a callous prematurity, by adolescence's almost paranoid perception of harsh scrutiny.
It is a book fraught with disappointment, frustration and embarrassment, but also determination, hope and self-discovery. Stuttering is, as Katherine quickly points out, not a fatal disease but it is a decidedly unexplored and misunderstood one. It is a condition that is unpredictable and humbling, that lays the afflicted vulnerable to the slings and arrows of society. It is a childhood bully who tends to retreat by adulthood, though not all of us will reach the wonderland of fluency: "Statistics will later break us into two groups," Katherine writes. "Those who "recover" and those who don't."
Katherine traces her journey with an unwanted passenger whose mission it is to mangle her every word -- her phonetic renderings of a voice made exasperatingly arrhythmic brought to mind another stutterer, the estimable David Mitchell, and his personification of the impediment through the inimical Hangman -- from its first appearance at the age of seven through the already daunting terrain of adolescence to finding a place in the adult world that will accommodate her years of accrued baggage. It is a personal voyage so punctuated with objective reflection and the slow growth of inner strength that any stutterer would be proud to call it their own.
For all my knee-jerk self-reproachment at having been beaten to the punch in terms of penning the definitive stutterer's memoir, Katherine's is by no means the path we all have followed. Despite her numerous attempts to find "success" in speech therapy, her gradual shift in knowing that she would give anything to divest herself of a speech impediment that makes simple verbal communication grounds for a panic attack (let's not even approach the unique horror the prospect of phone calls brings) to realizing that the hurdles such a condition has helped her overcome and the resolve it has instilled in her is empowering and paved with tiny victories but it is her own path to self-acceptance and hers alone, though her milestones and breakthroughs and jumbled emotions are all stops along the way that I can't help but believe are common to all stutterers' experiences.
The part of me that read this book in the hopes of recognizing echoes of myself and feeling a little less alone for it was dizzyingly satisfied. Katherine is roughly the same age as me and began stuttering around the same time I did. She, too, is a rarity among rarities, being a female stutterer who carried the disorder into adulthood. She is able to examine her younger self, her fears and her insecurities with a clinical eye and an improbable amount of heart. Reading about her early retreat inward, her horror over being seen as something broken, her struggle to overcome a speech impediment that overshadows all she is and is capable of every time she ventures a spoken thought offered me a sense of empathetic kinship that is usually reserved for the beautifully damaged fictional characters I've come to favor. Like me, she is no stranger to deploying an arsenal of thesaurus-gleaned stutter-friendly synonyms to dodge the words that are habitual problems. She adopted accents and affectations to gloss over verbal traps. She was reluctant to identify herself as a stutterer, preferring to ignore that which plagued her until she finally had to learn all she could about the foe within. Later, having realized that she could make her written voice do all the things her spoken one couldn't but being unsure of how to make it as a writer, she tried her hand at journalism.
It was what Katherine and I shared that made the differences in just our two stories appear so divergent, though: It was so easy to sympathetically nod along when she was navigating familiar territory that being jarred from it had the strange sensation of an out-of-body experience, or seeing the same role played by two different people. She emphasizes her parents' unflagging support and willingness to help her "get better" without pushing her beyond her comfort zone and reducing her to incurable disfluency, and I couldn't help but envy her of that. Her tales of speech therapy, the brief spurts of hopeful fluency that sputtered into the resurgence of the stutter she thought she had finally put to rest, were genuinely surprising, as I had always fancied that corrective measures were the ticket to speech unencumbered. And, because I can't help it, yes, I compared the severity of my stutter to those both reprinted and spoken of in this book, and was profoundly grateful that my worst days are what someone else wakes up hoping for.
The bravery Katherine embraces in exposing that which has been the most fiercely guarded part of herself is incredible. She digs into old diaries and painful memories to pinpoint relevant stopping points along her journey, which read as an offer of trust to the reader rather than cheap bids for congratulations. As an adult stutterer, I found it reassuring that someone was so open and detailed about this things so few people truly understand; as a younger stutterer, I imagine I would have found relief in knowing that someone else has trod this path before without letting the all-too-easy giant-in-chains excuse keep her down.
It is that honesty and refusal to sugarcoat her life as a stutterer that makes Katherine such a perfect voice for those who have yet to embrace their own. She examines how stuttering twists the things most people take for granted, like being able to supply one's own name quickly and effortlessly or making a joke without fearing that the punchline and timing will be ruined by an inopportune loop of repetition, but it is her straightforward examination of how a stutter affects one's professional path that nearly had me giving myself whiplash by nodding in such vigorous assent. "It turns out that careers are a sticky subject for stutters," she writes as an introduction:
Many advocates argue that any job is possible. They have a point. I have met stutterers in every career that, at twenty-two years old, I had assumed were nigh on impossible. ... Their hearts were in the right place, but there was one rather large problem. They gave me the distinct impression that any job was possible as long as there wasn't a discernible speech impediment. I could have anything I wanted as long as I didn't stutter obviously. ...
If you have the advocates on one hand, you have the realists on the other. They appreciate the sentiment that no job is impossible, but they refuse to drink the Kool-Aid. Instead they take to emphasizing the degree of the stutter. What may be possible for a mild stutterer is not always possible for someone who stalls on every word.
Katherine is able to take a step back from a condition she knows all too well in order to consider the non-stutterer's vantage point, to recognize the severity of each stutterer's impediment. She is a narrator who is remarkably adept at sidestepping the pitfalls of judgement in favor of considering all sides before attempting a thoughtful, logical assessment.
Out With It is engaging and insightful, showcasing its author's curiosity and capacity for overlooking the worst of a situation in order to focus on its benefits. While it's obviously got loads of appeal for stutters in particular, the gist of the story is making peace with one's imperfect demons and learning to look outward. Katherine's book "is not one of deliverance" nor does it have that moment where she is "magically fixed as the curtain drops" -- and it's all the better for delivering one of the book's unexpected messages: Recognize the difference between being grateful for what you have and settling, and know when wanting to be better becomes the same as demanding too much.
Katherine bemoans how she was in her twenties when Hollywood finally presented a stuttering cinematic hero in The King's Speech, and how there are few role models for stutterers beyond those who have successfully hidden their impediment to land some some of societal prominence. In unloading so much of herself in a book that's less of a memoir and more of a promise that someone has not only shared those moments of seemingly insurmountable mortification but also overcame all those same hurdles to become what she knew she was meant to be, I can't help but believe that Katherine Preston is filling that once-absent role all by herself.
Speech therapy was presented as an option exactly once, in what felt like an ambush when my elementary school's speech therapist pulled me aside during class a year later. Not being able to withstand the internally embellished embarrassment of a public outing as someone needing to be fixed while also imagining all the ways I could be reprimanded for interrupting class, I insisted I didn't need help just to end the inquisition as quickly as possible; I now have to assume that academic professionals wouldn't let a clueless seven-year-old have the last say, and that my parents (who, after asking my pediatrician how to treat my stutter, summarily ignored his advice and chose to make fun of me for years to come -- which did have the benefit of making the surprisingly few schoolyard jabs roll right off my otherwise too-sensitive self) or whatever teacher initiated this encounter didn't see the worth in pressing on.
The first time I decided I was ready to try speech therapy was in high school. I only wound up seeing the school's specialist a handful of times, as the sessions pretty much involved me reading aloud from whatever book she had available and her declaration that I didn't have a problem. At that point, after nearly a decade of living with a stutter, I knew my own patterns well enough to be frustrated with a seemingly optimistic prognosis: I have good days and I have bad days, with the problems mostly flaring up at double consonants or when speaking on the phone, and rarely occur when a book or a script supplies my every word.
I doubt I'll ever work with someone to "fix" the way I talk just as much as I doubt the possibility of shedding the verbal flaw I've sported for more than two decades, as I am now more interested in what I can do to encourage understanding but have been unsure of what exactly my options are. So when I stumbled upon an article about this book, I had two immediate reactions: "I absolutely need to read this" and "I absolutely should have written this." (Later, "Why wasn't I interviewed for this?" would come, but fleetingly and only half seriously.) I have never spoken to another stutterer and certainly never had a chance to ask the probing and probably eagerly invasive questions I've been dying to lob at someone else who knows what it's like to live with an invisible hand at one's throat: This book was that chance. Here is someone offering up not only her own experiences but also those of so many others.
Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice is a story in two parts. It is an unflinchingly honest account of its author's nearly lifelong battle with her stutter as well as a study of how the condition manifests itself in others, the schools of thought proposing various coping methods and solutions to hide behind, and the search to understand just what exactly causes this particular speech impediment. It is the need for inner reflection happening in tandem with outward-focused curiosity that turned Katherine Preston's debut into exactly what I expected a stutterer's memoir to be, as the affliction makes it impossible for a person to remain in ignorance of how his or her faltering speech affects and is perceived by every single person who serves as our audience. To stutter at an early age is to find out what happens when childhood's blissful lack of self-awareness is replaced, with a callous prematurity, by adolescence's almost paranoid perception of harsh scrutiny.
It is a book fraught with disappointment, frustration and embarrassment, but also determination, hope and self-discovery. Stuttering is, as Katherine quickly points out, not a fatal disease but it is a decidedly unexplored and misunderstood one. It is a condition that is unpredictable and humbling, that lays the afflicted vulnerable to the slings and arrows of society. It is a childhood bully who tends to retreat by adulthood, though not all of us will reach the wonderland of fluency: "Statistics will later break us into two groups," Katherine writes. "Those who "recover" and those who don't."
Katherine traces her journey with an unwanted passenger whose mission it is to mangle her every word -- her phonetic renderings of a voice made exasperatingly arrhythmic brought to mind another stutterer, the estimable David Mitchell, and his personification of the impediment through the inimical Hangman -- from its first appearance at the age of seven through the already daunting terrain of adolescence to finding a place in the adult world that will accommodate her years of accrued baggage. It is a personal voyage so punctuated with objective reflection and the slow growth of inner strength that any stutterer would be proud to call it their own.
For all my knee-jerk self-reproachment at having been beaten to the punch in terms of penning the definitive stutterer's memoir, Katherine's is by no means the path we all have followed. Despite her numerous attempts to find "success" in speech therapy, her gradual shift in knowing that she would give anything to divest herself of a speech impediment that makes simple verbal communication grounds for a panic attack (let's not even approach the unique horror the prospect of phone calls brings) to realizing that the hurdles such a condition has helped her overcome and the resolve it has instilled in her is empowering and paved with tiny victories but it is her own path to self-acceptance and hers alone, though her milestones and breakthroughs and jumbled emotions are all stops along the way that I can't help but believe are common to all stutterers' experiences.
The part of me that read this book in the hopes of recognizing echoes of myself and feeling a little less alone for it was dizzyingly satisfied. Katherine is roughly the same age as me and began stuttering around the same time I did. She, too, is a rarity among rarities, being a female stutterer who carried the disorder into adulthood. She is able to examine her younger self, her fears and her insecurities with a clinical eye and an improbable amount of heart. Reading about her early retreat inward, her horror over being seen as something broken, her struggle to overcome a speech impediment that overshadows all she is and is capable of every time she ventures a spoken thought offered me a sense of empathetic kinship that is usually reserved for the beautifully damaged fictional characters I've come to favor. Like me, she is no stranger to deploying an arsenal of thesaurus-gleaned stutter-friendly synonyms to dodge the words that are habitual problems. She adopted accents and affectations to gloss over verbal traps. She was reluctant to identify herself as a stutterer, preferring to ignore that which plagued her until she finally had to learn all she could about the foe within. Later, having realized that she could make her written voice do all the things her spoken one couldn't but being unsure of how to make it as a writer, she tried her hand at journalism.
It was what Katherine and I shared that made the differences in just our two stories appear so divergent, though: It was so easy to sympathetically nod along when she was navigating familiar territory that being jarred from it had the strange sensation of an out-of-body experience, or seeing the same role played by two different people. She emphasizes her parents' unflagging support and willingness to help her "get better" without pushing her beyond her comfort zone and reducing her to incurable disfluency, and I couldn't help but envy her of that. Her tales of speech therapy, the brief spurts of hopeful fluency that sputtered into the resurgence of the stutter she thought she had finally put to rest, were genuinely surprising, as I had always fancied that corrective measures were the ticket to speech unencumbered. And, because I can't help it, yes, I compared the severity of my stutter to those both reprinted and spoken of in this book, and was profoundly grateful that my worst days are what someone else wakes up hoping for.
The bravery Katherine embraces in exposing that which has been the most fiercely guarded part of herself is incredible. She digs into old diaries and painful memories to pinpoint relevant stopping points along her journey, which read as an offer of trust to the reader rather than cheap bids for congratulations. As an adult stutterer, I found it reassuring that someone was so open and detailed about this things so few people truly understand; as a younger stutterer, I imagine I would have found relief in knowing that someone else has trod this path before without letting the all-too-easy giant-in-chains excuse keep her down.
It is that honesty and refusal to sugarcoat her life as a stutterer that makes Katherine such a perfect voice for those who have yet to embrace their own. She examines how stuttering twists the things most people take for granted, like being able to supply one's own name quickly and effortlessly or making a joke without fearing that the punchline and timing will be ruined by an inopportune loop of repetition, but it is her straightforward examination of how a stutter affects one's professional path that nearly had me giving myself whiplash by nodding in such vigorous assent. "It turns out that careers are a sticky subject for stutters," she writes as an introduction:
Many advocates argue that any job is possible. They have a point. I have met stutterers in every career that, at twenty-two years old, I had assumed were nigh on impossible. ... Their hearts were in the right place, but there was one rather large problem. They gave me the distinct impression that any job was possible as long as there wasn't a discernible speech impediment. I could have anything I wanted as long as I didn't stutter obviously. ...
If you have the advocates on one hand, you have the realists on the other. They appreciate the sentiment that no job is impossible, but they refuse to drink the Kool-Aid. Instead they take to emphasizing the degree of the stutter. What may be possible for a mild stutterer is not always possible for someone who stalls on every word.
Katherine is able to take a step back from a condition she knows all too well in order to consider the non-stutterer's vantage point, to recognize the severity of each stutterer's impediment. She is a narrator who is remarkably adept at sidestepping the pitfalls of judgement in favor of considering all sides before attempting a thoughtful, logical assessment.
Out With It is engaging and insightful, showcasing its author's curiosity and capacity for overlooking the worst of a situation in order to focus on its benefits. While it's obviously got loads of appeal for stutters in particular, the gist of the story is making peace with one's imperfect demons and learning to look outward. Katherine's book "is not one of deliverance" nor does it have that moment where she is "magically fixed as the curtain drops" -- and it's all the better for delivering one of the book's unexpected messages: Recognize the difference between being grateful for what you have and settling, and know when wanting to be better becomes the same as demanding too much.
Katherine bemoans how she was in her twenties when Hollywood finally presented a stuttering cinematic hero in The King's Speech, and how there are few role models for stutterers beyond those who have successfully hidden their impediment to land some some of societal prominence. In unloading so much of herself in a book that's less of a memoir and more of a promise that someone has not only shared those moments of seemingly insurmountable mortification but also overcame all those same hurdles to become what she knew she was meant to be, I can't help but believe that Katherine Preston is filling that once-absent role all by herself.
November 29, 2012
First of all, I hated this book. Second of all, I loved this book. I am also simultaneously relieved yet furious that Katherine didn't track me down. It's not like I'm anonymous by any means.
What Katherine provides is an eloquent yet painful reminder of my deepest, darkest fears and insecurities. As a female stutterer, I quickly discovered that my very existence was a huge anomaly. I did not meet another female stutterer until well into adulthood. Like Katherine, I suffered alone and learned to quickly read faces and responses to my stuttering. I have avoided giving my name, given a wrong name, and looked at the telephone with loathing and longing. I spent hours on my knees praying and crying that God would take away the horrible blemish of my existence. Like Katherine, I knew that if I could only be cured, nothing could stop me from becoming this amazing human being.
Now imagine sitting in a high school class and watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Fully aware of the sideways glances from classmates as the character in the movie that stuttered, blocked, stammered, and ticked his way through his lines. I knew that I was being equated to an insecure, intellectually and sanity challenged young man who eventually committed suicide. Yay.
Like Katherine, I have wonderful and supportive parents who wanted to help me find a cure. Problematic in that scenario is that it indicates that I am sick and/or broken. At great expense and sacrifice, I was driven to speech therapy for years, flown to Houston to have neurological tests conducted along with assessments of my intellectual abilities yet my gratitude was the same as Katherine's. I seethed without having an appropriate object to despise.
By the way, thank you, Mom and Dad!
Katherine did forget to mention a contraption from her very island, the Edinburgh Masker which the stutterer fastens onto her neck (scarves were not popular) while the vibration set off a mechanical signal to the earpiece inside the ear canal and "masked" the stutterer's voice. This stunned this adolescent stuttering girl into fluency I couldn't hear yet quickly understood I was speaking in monotone. Picture a pretty blonde teenager across the room. She is attractive and has an open expression in her eyes, big smile and no braces. Now add a weird choker on her neck with wires going downward into a box contraption and wires reaching up (mostly hidden under her shirt, and yet) still visible under her hair and attaching to pseudo-hearing aides. That would be me. Foxy, indeed.
Honestly, although the author and I are two decades apart in age, lived on different continents, she described my childhood (sans my brutal siblings) and therapy in perfect and painful detail. I had a visceral reaction to the words "Delayed Auditory Feedback." I think I threw up just a little bit inside my mouth both when I read the phrase and just now as I typed it. I could write a memoir about my life as a stutterer and the irony is not lost on me. My gift as a lay writer is a direct result of being verbally tongue tied. This is where the author and I diverge then converge.
Katherine is 27 years old as she writes this book. She ran right up to her stutter, teased it, and embraced it. She looked under it, over it, and even into it. Okay, that last part, I did, too, spending all of one year at a university studying communication disorders in an effort to make a career in speech pathology. I decided I didn't love it enough to make it a career. At the age of 27, I was still running from identifying myself with my stuttering. I was trying to prove I was worthwhile in spite of it. Katherine wisely embraced her insecurities and speech imperfection and discovered how it defined her as the exceptional woman she is today. I would love to talk to her and have her explain to me how she found the courage to not only absolve herself of her old life in a different country but to spend a year looking closely at herself and others who stutter. She interviewed hundreds of stutters, researchers, therapists, and significant others. She identified herself with others who stutter. Only a stutterer in denial (like myself) can truly appreciate the enormity and beauty of this endeavor.
Katherine and I converge again at the end, although her realizations and self understanding come much earlier than my own. We are a minority in a minority. We are women who did not outgrow stuttering. We traded our psychological baggage for accomplishments to pin at the end of our names. Aside from The King's Speech, stuttering has been historically and unfairly linked to being emotionally disturbed and stupid. What we both desire is for greater understanding that stuttering is a neurological and physiological issue. Telling us to slow down, calm down, or asking us if we forgot our name does not help. At all.
Non sequitur tangent: Why do people ask that? Again, when Katherine brought that one up in the book, I felt my own ire, particularly after realizing someone asked me the very day I read this book. Although Katherine is more forgiving and understanding of this phrase and listeners' behavior, I will admit my own frailties. I have been known to bluntly state to a habitual sentence-finisher that I REALLY hate being interrupted. Please stop. Now.
But then I started thinking how I don't understand WHY anybody would ask the question, "Did you forget your name?" As a social experiment, I am going to respond to the next person that says this with a shocked look and, "Oh my gosh! I did!" Then I'll just stare at the interrupter in silence, with wide, surprised eyes.
What Katherine eloquently phrases is that she, like a large percentage of stutters, is driven to succeed. I believed my success in academia and then in psychology was to spite my stutter. It was years later that I realized that because of my stuttering, I became more focused on helping people. I became more empathetic and naturally gravitated toward educational psychology. I listen more carefully. My words are weightier because they cost me more. Because I stutter, I love words more than if I didn't stutter. I love to read words, write words, think words. I love to hear myself say words. I don't love to hear myself stutter the words but that is the way I am hardwired.
As Katherine discovered and I can whole heartedly echo, fluency is possible but it comes at a price. We can trade our stutters for a new strange and unnatural way of speaking (she describes it and I ached and laughed since I'd never had the opportunity to talk to another person who stutters and employed the techniques), but the biggest cost of fluency is giving up our hard-earned determination and accomplishments. We would have to give up the essence of who we are.
Highly recommend this book. Love, love, loved it.
What Katherine provides is an eloquent yet painful reminder of my deepest, darkest fears and insecurities. As a female stutterer, I quickly discovered that my very existence was a huge anomaly. I did not meet another female stutterer until well into adulthood. Like Katherine, I suffered alone and learned to quickly read faces and responses to my stuttering. I have avoided giving my name, given a wrong name, and looked at the telephone with loathing and longing. I spent hours on my knees praying and crying that God would take away the horrible blemish of my existence. Like Katherine, I knew that if I could only be cured, nothing could stop me from becoming this amazing human being.
Now imagine sitting in a high school class and watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Fully aware of the sideways glances from classmates as the character in the movie that stuttered, blocked, stammered, and ticked his way through his lines. I knew that I was being equated to an insecure, intellectually and sanity challenged young man who eventually committed suicide. Yay.
Like Katherine, I have wonderful and supportive parents who wanted to help me find a cure. Problematic in that scenario is that it indicates that I am sick and/or broken. At great expense and sacrifice, I was driven to speech therapy for years, flown to Houston to have neurological tests conducted along with assessments of my intellectual abilities yet my gratitude was the same as Katherine's. I seethed without having an appropriate object to despise.
By the way, thank you, Mom and Dad!
Katherine did forget to mention a contraption from her very island, the Edinburgh Masker which the stutterer fastens onto her neck (scarves were not popular) while the vibration set off a mechanical signal to the earpiece inside the ear canal and "masked" the stutterer's voice. This stunned this adolescent stuttering girl into fluency I couldn't hear yet quickly understood I was speaking in monotone. Picture a pretty blonde teenager across the room. She is attractive and has an open expression in her eyes, big smile and no braces. Now add a weird choker on her neck with wires going downward into a box contraption and wires reaching up (mostly hidden under her shirt, and yet) still visible under her hair and attaching to pseudo-hearing aides. That would be me. Foxy, indeed.
Honestly, although the author and I are two decades apart in age, lived on different continents, she described my childhood (sans my brutal siblings) and therapy in perfect and painful detail. I had a visceral reaction to the words "Delayed Auditory Feedback." I think I threw up just a little bit inside my mouth both when I read the phrase and just now as I typed it. I could write a memoir about my life as a stutterer and the irony is not lost on me. My gift as a lay writer is a direct result of being verbally tongue tied. This is where the author and I diverge then converge.
Katherine is 27 years old as she writes this book. She ran right up to her stutter, teased it, and embraced it. She looked under it, over it, and even into it. Okay, that last part, I did, too, spending all of one year at a university studying communication disorders in an effort to make a career in speech pathology. I decided I didn't love it enough to make it a career. At the age of 27, I was still running from identifying myself with my stuttering. I was trying to prove I was worthwhile in spite of it. Katherine wisely embraced her insecurities and speech imperfection and discovered how it defined her as the exceptional woman she is today. I would love to talk to her and have her explain to me how she found the courage to not only absolve herself of her old life in a different country but to spend a year looking closely at herself and others who stutter. She interviewed hundreds of stutters, researchers, therapists, and significant others. She identified herself with others who stutter. Only a stutterer in denial (like myself) can truly appreciate the enormity and beauty of this endeavor.
Katherine and I converge again at the end, although her realizations and self understanding come much earlier than my own. We are a minority in a minority. We are women who did not outgrow stuttering. We traded our psychological baggage for accomplishments to pin at the end of our names. Aside from The King's Speech, stuttering has been historically and unfairly linked to being emotionally disturbed and stupid. What we both desire is for greater understanding that stuttering is a neurological and physiological issue. Telling us to slow down, calm down, or asking us if we forgot our name does not help. At all.
Non sequitur tangent: Why do people ask that? Again, when Katherine brought that one up in the book, I felt my own ire, particularly after realizing someone asked me the very day I read this book. Although Katherine is more forgiving and understanding of this phrase and listeners' behavior, I will admit my own frailties. I have been known to bluntly state to a habitual sentence-finisher that I REALLY hate being interrupted. Please stop. Now.
But then I started thinking how I don't understand WHY anybody would ask the question, "Did you forget your name?" As a social experiment, I am going to respond to the next person that says this with a shocked look and, "Oh my gosh! I did!" Then I'll just stare at the interrupter in silence, with wide, surprised eyes.
What Katherine eloquently phrases is that she, like a large percentage of stutters, is driven to succeed. I believed my success in academia and then in psychology was to spite my stutter. It was years later that I realized that because of my stuttering, I became more focused on helping people. I became more empathetic and naturally gravitated toward educational psychology. I listen more carefully. My words are weightier because they cost me more. Because I stutter, I love words more than if I didn't stutter. I love to read words, write words, think words. I love to hear myself say words. I don't love to hear myself stutter the words but that is the way I am hardwired.
As Katherine discovered and I can whole heartedly echo, fluency is possible but it comes at a price. We can trade our stutters for a new strange and unnatural way of speaking (she describes it and I ached and laughed since I'd never had the opportunity to talk to another person who stutters and employed the techniques), but the biggest cost of fluency is giving up our hard-earned determination and accomplishments. We would have to give up the essence of who we are.
Highly recommend this book. Love, love, loved it.
April 5, 2013
This isn't a book for stutters. It is a book for everyone.
Preston uses stuttering (extremely deftly) as a vehicle by which to explore one of the hardest challenges everyone faces: how to befriend the totality of one's experience?
With lightness, humor, and an eye for detail Preston begs this question of everyone: how can you accept and love the most challenging parts of yourself? And, even more radically, what if they aren't problems at all but actually the areas where your deepest strengths lie?
How can we forgo the often seductive notion of a "cure" or a "fix" in favor of a more complete understanding of self? How do we end the war within?
I always know that I am reading a great book when I miss my subway stop. I did that so often with Out With It I had to just stop reading on the train!
Preston uses stuttering (extremely deftly) as a vehicle by which to explore one of the hardest challenges everyone faces: how to befriend the totality of one's experience?
With lightness, humor, and an eye for detail Preston begs this question of everyone: how can you accept and love the most challenging parts of yourself? And, even more radically, what if they aren't problems at all but actually the areas where your deepest strengths lie?
How can we forgo the often seductive notion of a "cure" or a "fix" in favor of a more complete understanding of self? How do we end the war within?
I always know that I am reading a great book when I miss my subway stop. I did that so often with Out With It I had to just stop reading on the train!
June 20, 2023
3.5 stars
Katherine has stuttered since she was 7-years old. Her mother tried to get her help when she was younger, but at the time, Katherine just didn’t want to deal confront it. Her family and friends were always supportive, but of course, it was hard when meeting someone new or interacting with people she didn’t know. As she got older, she did try various things to stop the stuttering – to become “fluent”. Nothing lasted – some things might work temporarily, but the stutter always came back. Eventually, Katherine travelled to the US (from England where she grew up) to interview researchers and other stutterers. (Many people prefer the phrase “people who stutter”, but Katherine herself is fine with “stutterer”.)
I thought this was good. I learned a few things: many stutterers have trouble with their names; stuttering is more common among boys/men; most children do grow out of their stutters, but of course not everyone. Katherine was originally planning to write her book as an oral history and focus on the people she interviewed, but there actually ended up not being very much of that in the end; it obviously did turn into her own memoir. She probably could still write that oral history!
Katherine has stuttered since she was 7-years old. Her mother tried to get her help when she was younger, but at the time, Katherine just didn’t want to deal confront it. Her family and friends were always supportive, but of course, it was hard when meeting someone new or interacting with people she didn’t know. As she got older, she did try various things to stop the stuttering – to become “fluent”. Nothing lasted – some things might work temporarily, but the stutter always came back. Eventually, Katherine travelled to the US (from England where she grew up) to interview researchers and other stutterers. (Many people prefer the phrase “people who stutter”, but Katherine herself is fine with “stutterer”.)
I thought this was good. I learned a few things: many stutterers have trouble with their names; stuttering is more common among boys/men; most children do grow out of their stutters, but of course not everyone. Katherine was originally planning to write her book as an oral history and focus on the people she interviewed, but there actually ended up not being very much of that in the end; it obviously did turn into her own memoir. She probably could still write that oral history!
July 17, 2025
Why can't we get more books like this?
October 1, 2023
I had to read this book for school but I honestly enjoyed it so much! An inside look into the life of a person who stutters! I loved reading her perspective especially since I’m currently working with kids who stutter at my clinicals for school! I’d recommend especially for future SLPs ;)
March 7, 2013
Received as an ARC from the publisher. Yes, I was a stutterer. Started in about 6th grade, age 12. Was especially embarassing in school when I had to take a turn at reading aloud in the class. Certain sounds were really difficult---w, b,t, and others. Had many sessions with a school speech therapist with not much success. To make a long story short, he suggested that I take a public speaking class in 9th grade, which I thought was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of, since public speaking was exactly what I couldn't do!!! I don't know how much the speech teacher knew about my stuttering, but she didn't treat me any differently than the other students in the class. Exercises included reciting the alphabet slowly all in one breath without changing your voice as you got closer to the end. Try it, it's not easy, but it taught me about diaphragm breathing and projecting my voice. Whispering and projecting was also fun. Eventually I was giving speeches and entering competitions. Was it just "outgrowing" the stutter(whatever that means), or did I just learn different breathing techniques? Who knows, but it was the best experience of my high school. And I took the class for 4 years!
This book should be required reading in high school, not only to be read by stutterers, but by those students who may come in contact with someone with this habit. Ms. Preston should be very proud of herself and her book.
This book should be required reading in high school, not only to be read by stutterers, but by those students who may come in contact with someone with this habit. Ms. Preston should be very proud of herself and her book.
August 17, 2022
Every stutterer has two things in common:
1. Their name is one of the hardest things for them to say.
2. They have, at least once, been asked if they forgot their name.
I wish I could tell everyone I know to read this. It does a good job explaining all the feelings and scenarios that a person who stutters has gone through. Every time I have to order food, I look through the entire menu to find something that won't be difficult for me to say. I substitute words all the time, which sometimes results in very obtuse descriptions and makes people think and sometimes even say, "Why did you say it like that?"
I consider myself lucky because of how good I am at word substitution because I've been able to hide my stutter from coworkers and most of my friends to the point where they don't know about it until I tell them. But I also consider myself unlucky because it makes it too easy a lot of the time, and avoidance just results in no progress or even backwards progress. Today, I am unable to say things fluently that I would've been able to say a few years ago.
Maybe I'll try what Preston does here. She stuttered on purpose in private and in public. It helped her to normalize it. I think it's important, too, how this book explains stuttering for those who don't stutter. It explains how stuttering isn't always a repetition of a sound, but can mean struggling to get any sound at all ("blocking") or stretch a sound out ("prolongation"). It can result in weird movements with your arms and legs or awkward facial movements.
I enjoyed Katherine's story about her acceptance of her speech. I'm one of those stutterers who leans towards avoidance, and I know that to make myself less anxious about speaking, I need to accept myself. Katherine tells us how she put herself through tough obstacles and how she came away in the end without anxiety or nervousness. Now she stutters in public ordering food, talking to strangers, and even giving public speeches without caring if others will think badly of her. I'll keep her story in mind for when I need the extra strength.
1. Their name is one of the hardest things for them to say.
2. They have, at least once, been asked if they forgot their name.
I wish I could tell everyone I know to read this. It does a good job explaining all the feelings and scenarios that a person who stutters has gone through. Every time I have to order food, I look through the entire menu to find something that won't be difficult for me to say. I substitute words all the time, which sometimes results in very obtuse descriptions and makes people think and sometimes even say, "Why did you say it like that?"
I consider myself lucky because of how good I am at word substitution because I've been able to hide my stutter from coworkers and most of my friends to the point where they don't know about it until I tell them. But I also consider myself unlucky because it makes it too easy a lot of the time, and avoidance just results in no progress or even backwards progress. Today, I am unable to say things fluently that I would've been able to say a few years ago.
Maybe I'll try what Preston does here. She stuttered on purpose in private and in public. It helped her to normalize it. I think it's important, too, how this book explains stuttering for those who don't stutter. It explains how stuttering isn't always a repetition of a sound, but can mean struggling to get any sound at all ("blocking") or stretch a sound out ("prolongation"). It can result in weird movements with your arms and legs or awkward facial movements.
I enjoyed Katherine's story about her acceptance of her speech. I'm one of those stutterers who leans towards avoidance, and I know that to make myself less anxious about speaking, I need to accept myself. Katherine tells us how she put herself through tough obstacles and how she came away in the end without anxiety or nervousness. Now she stutters in public ordering food, talking to strangers, and even giving public speeches without caring if others will think badly of her. I'll keep her story in mind for when I need the extra strength.
November 8, 2021
This is an incredible memoir. Preston is a wonderful writer, and her story is so important. I learned so much from this book, and it left me wishing she had been able to publish two books - this memoir, and the original non-fiction book about her interviews with people who stutter and speech therapists. This book broke my heart, but it also felt really grounding. Preston writes about her struggles in a way that is neither despairing nor saccharine. It’s exactly the right note for me to hit as I try to support my family member who has developed a stutter. I will return to this book again - it’s indispensable, and I’m very grateful that she wrote it.
October 3, 2024
Such a wonderful book! Definitely one of the best books I’ve ever had to read for school. I think the author did an amazing job at portraying stuttering and conveying the feelings that she and other people that stutter have. Her growth throughout her life (and her book) was very evident. Would recommend!!
March 31, 2023
*disclaimer* I had to read this book for school, however I ended up really liking it! The author gave great insight on having a stutter and mentioned quite a few things I will remember moving forward as an slp
May 25, 2024
4.5 stars-
I actually read this within 8 hours which is insane for me but it’s so comforting to read. If you are a person who stutters you understand every emotion and thought process. If you aren’t it��s a great window into our world. Loved it🫶🏼
I actually read this within 8 hours which is insane for me but it’s so comforting to read. If you are a person who stutters you understand every emotion and thought process. If you aren’t it��s a great window into our world. Loved it🫶🏼
May 14, 2020
This isn't a book for casual readers. You may find it enjoyable if you are REALLY into stuttering and want to hear about how it makes one person feel. The author does include other stutterers reactions to their condition, but it's very limited. Overall it was well written and accomplishes what it set out to accomplish.
November 7, 2024
Yet another book I had to read for class…
February 13, 2017
I picked this up by chance at a used bookstore and I'm so glad I did. I was intrigued by the cover, and interested in the subject.
I'm fluent and don't know anyone who has a stutter. However, as someone with an anxiety disorder that literally makes it impossible to get the words out sometimes, I could feel each description of Preston's blocks.
She writes with simple eloquence and it's clear she has a wicked sense of humor and I loved that the entire way through. I'm grateful she turned what was intended to be a book of oral histories into a memoir with her personal experiences. It makes the book so touching and insightful.
I particularly enjoyed when the book reached Preston's interviews in America, as I was intrigued by the theories behind what's actually happening in the brain of someone with a stutter. But if that's not your cup of tea, it is a very brief part of an overall first-hand account of turning a fierce stubborn will to find a cure into the loving acceptance of herself.
I was reminded all the way through that I hope to one day be as bright, warm, loving, and kind as Katherine Preston is able to be towards herself and her audiences.
A must read.
I'm fluent and don't know anyone who has a stutter. However, as someone with an anxiety disorder that literally makes it impossible to get the words out sometimes, I could feel each description of Preston's blocks.
She writes with simple eloquence and it's clear she has a wicked sense of humor and I loved that the entire way through. I'm grateful she turned what was intended to be a book of oral histories into a memoir with her personal experiences. It makes the book so touching and insightful.
I particularly enjoyed when the book reached Preston's interviews in America, as I was intrigued by the theories behind what's actually happening in the brain of someone with a stutter. But if that's not your cup of tea, it is a very brief part of an overall first-hand account of turning a fierce stubborn will to find a cure into the loving acceptance of herself.
I was reminded all the way through that I hope to one day be as bright, warm, loving, and kind as Katherine Preston is able to be towards herself and her audiences.
A must read.
April 18, 2013
Katherine's debut novel is sure to make you laugh, make you think and make you finish it without putting it down- all the elements I need in a good book! I read Out With It in 2 days, getting sucked in to Katherine's story and wondering how it would all turn out for her. I particularly enjoyed how thought provoking it was. I remember back to my days at University, full of anguish about how others felt about me and how I was being perceived. I have never been someone to notice a stutter. I have a couple of friends who stutter and it's not something I have ever paid any attention to. It made me realise that we all dwell on what we perceive to be our negative traits, whilst others are far too busy to be worrying about their own things to be concerned with ours.
Katherine is very very funny. I won't spoil the storyline, but highly recommend you read this beautifully written memoir. I saw another review written by a stutterer that said this should be recommended reading in schools. I couldn't agree more!
I am sure we will be seeing plenty more from this gifted wordsmith. Congratulations Katherine.
Katherine is very very funny. I won't spoil the storyline, but highly recommend you read this beautifully written memoir. I saw another review written by a stutterer that said this should be recommended reading in schools. I couldn't agree more!
I am sure we will be seeing plenty more from this gifted wordsmith. Congratulations Katherine.
March 1, 2015
Inspiring Must Read for All PWS (people who stutter)
I purchased this book in desperate hopes of ridding myself of the stutter I have lived with for the past decade. I started stuttering when I was nine or ten years old and to this day can still remember the cruelty I felt from students as well as some teachers. Reading this book has changed my life as a PWS and I only wish I had purchased this book sooner. If you are a PWS or a relative or friend of a PWS please don't hesitate to purchase this book. I purchased this book with the belief my stutter was holding me back, that I would never be able to get a decent career out of college and never would have imagined how wrong I was. This book is an inspiring must read for everyone who feels like their being a PWS is holding them back as they will discover how much life has to hold for you.
I purchased this book in desperate hopes of ridding myself of the stutter I have lived with for the past decade. I started stuttering when I was nine or ten years old and to this day can still remember the cruelty I felt from students as well as some teachers. Reading this book has changed my life as a PWS and I only wish I had purchased this book sooner. If you are a PWS or a relative or friend of a PWS please don't hesitate to purchase this book. I purchased this book with the belief my stutter was holding me back, that I would never be able to get a decent career out of college and never would have imagined how wrong I was. This book is an inspiring must read for everyone who feels like their being a PWS is holding them back as they will discover how much life has to hold for you.
March 4, 2019
I really appreciate how open and vulnerable the author was with her story. I also admire how she made this big goal of traveling America to interview different stutterers and write a book about it and she achieved that goal. The work and thought that went into this project is very impressive. I’m a speech language pathologist and read this as a work assignment. It was a very worthwhile read and I enjoyed it.
April 16, 2013
This book is great--a really captivating, sad yet inspiring story of one woman's struggle to embrace her full self. As someone already noted, this is not a book just for stutterers, but for everyone.
It is a memoir, but rests upon a foundation of thorough research. A work that hopefully will influence the way we think about stuttering, Out With It is a refreshing and well-written debut.
It is a memoir, but rests upon a foundation of thorough research. A work that hopefully will influence the way we think about stuttering, Out With It is a refreshing and well-written debut.
December 19, 2013
Katherine is a great advocate for us stammerers and this is a good book for any stammerer or anyone interested in stammering people. I don't like the word 'stutter' though.
Read
November 26, 2023It is very difficult for me to give a star rating for a memoir that I didn't love.
A mid star or low star rating implies that I find fault with the author's personal story, or some aspect of her story that affects her life, which isn't the case for this book.
There were parts of this memoir I really enjoyed: experiences with friends, family, speech therapists, other people who stutter-- interactions with her perspective that are interesting and enlightening.
And then there are parts where she writes things like this:
"I look around the room and see two girls look at each other and smirk. Later one of them will end up in jail and the other will disappear into some mediocre oblivion."
General idea: Many people suck. This line refers to teenage girls that made fun of her. I don't know if this is meant as a comedic jibe, but there were a few instances that were hard to read because Preston's inner dialogue takes a mean girl approach that didn't sit well with me.
I recommend this book- not just for people who stutter, or people who know others that stutter- but for the general population of readers. I hate the idea that empathy is learned, but learning how others experience their life is an important quality that teaches humility and respect for others.
A mid star or low star rating implies that I find fault with the author's personal story, or some aspect of her story that affects her life, which isn't the case for this book.
There were parts of this memoir I really enjoyed: experiences with friends, family, speech therapists, other people who stutter-- interactions with her perspective that are interesting and enlightening.
And then there are parts where she writes things like this:
"I look around the room and see two girls look at each other and smirk. Later one of them will end up in jail and the other will disappear into some mediocre oblivion."
General idea: Many people suck. This line refers to teenage girls that made fun of her. I don't know if this is meant as a comedic jibe, but there were a few instances that were hard to read because Preston's inner dialogue takes a mean girl approach that didn't sit well with me.
I recommend this book- not just for people who stutter, or people who know others that stutter- but for the general population of readers. I hate the idea that empathy is learned, but learning how others experience their life is an important quality that teaches humility and respect for others.
April 14, 2023
“I have learnt, finally, that happiness and fluency do not walk hand in hand as easily as I thought. It turns out that stutterers are not the only ones who have problems. It turns out that we all are in this messy, complicated world together, and the power that our vulnerabilities hold over us seems to rest on how we choose to address them. If you don’t care, your problems don’t really have a leg to stand on. If you decide to embrace them, they are totally dismembered.”
I really enjoyed this read for school. Katherine’s writing style is captivating and makes me think this book could be enjoyed even outside of an educational read. I also love learning firsthand from the perspectives of clients rather than therapists who are removed from the situation. 💜
I really enjoyed this read for school. Katherine’s writing style is captivating and makes me think this book could be enjoyed even outside of an educational read. I also love learning firsthand from the perspectives of clients rather than therapists who are removed from the situation. 💜
December 31, 2019
Being a person who stutters, I found this book to be a breath of fresh air. This is only the second book that I’ve read about stuttering, and I deeply appreciated Katherine’s honesty and vulnerability about her stuttering. I did not think that anyone was more self aware than me, put Katherine puts me to shame. Katherine’s book taught me to accept my stuttering and laugh at yourself more often. My speech has improved over time but as the old saying goes, “when you can least afford to stutter, you will.”
August 13, 2020
For anyone looking to understand the world of a stutterer, I highly recommend this book. As a stutterer for the past 20 years, I’ve come to terms that my stutter would always hold me back and I’d never be able to reach my full potential. However, Katherine taught the exact opposite and in a way I never thought I’d look at stuttering as something so empowering. As I read, I felt as though she was telling my story and I found myself cringing and laughing remembering parts of my childhood and recent memories where stuttering over took me. Wonderful read!!
February 18, 2020
This book hit so close to home for me - I am also in that rare group of adult, female stutterers that have had the speech disfluency since I was a kid, and so much of what the author wrote about, her feelings, experiences... I also had/still have.
This book spoke to me on so many levels, and to see part of my own story put down in words, even though it's through the eyes of another person... priceless.
This book spoke to me on so many levels, and to see part of my own story put down in words, even though it's through the eyes of another person... priceless.
November 26, 2021
A good read - so important for understanding and internalizing the struggles of someone who stutters. It is educational, not simply in a textbook definition of stuttering kind of way, but for advocating for stuttering and educating the general public on what to do when speaking with someone who stutters. It captures the emotions, pain, and experiences that make life with a stutter hard.
January 31, 2022
Since I've been reading personal books that hit close to home for the month of January, I decided to read “Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice” by Katherine Preston because I’ve personally dealt with stuttering as a toddler through the end of 5th grade(I'm a recovered stutter), so I understand all the anguish and hardships that come with it.
Overall, I really enjoying this book because it’s an insightful and an inspiring read about Katherine’s journey as a lifelong stutter. The book is also very encouraging with those with the condition and introduces the matter with an educational and understanding approach. On top of that, it's also an informative read about the condition itself through personal stories, facts, science, and treatments. I learned a few new things I didn't know before.
It's a great book and I highly recommend it to stutters, family or friends wanting to better understand, and of course anyone interested in learning more about Katherine's journey or about the condition itself.
Overall, I really enjoying this book because it’s an insightful and an inspiring read about Katherine’s journey as a lifelong stutter. The book is also very encouraging with those with the condition and introduces the matter with an educational and understanding approach. On top of that, it's also an informative read about the condition itself through personal stories, facts, science, and treatments. I learned a few new things I didn't know before.
It's a great book and I highly recommend it to stutters, family or friends wanting to better understand, and of course anyone interested in learning more about Katherine's journey or about the condition itself.
May 23, 2023
A memoir by a young British woman who has struggled with stuttering since she was seven years old.
Despite much effort by her parents, and later by herself, her stuttering never went away for any great length of time.
In addition to the personal part of the book, the author also interviews many researchers and reports on their findings.
Despite much effort by her parents, and later by herself, her stuttering never went away for any great length of time.
In addition to the personal part of the book, the author also interviews many researchers and reports on their findings.
March 29, 2021
A well written memoir of someone who stutters, touching on the science of stuttering, stuttering treatments, and social attitudes towards stuttering. A great book for people who stutter or, as in my case, has a family member who stutters. 3.5
March 6, 2019
A unique perspective of stuttering. It was a refreshing read as a speech therapist.
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