I loved the essays, so in a way the JRC trial proceedings - an account that took up a good chunk of the book - felt too detailed, too clinical and interminably harrowing. But it does belong, and in the end it spoke to me more than anything else. It may not be the best written collection, and not the best arranged, but it's important.
This essay collection is varied,with several autobiographical essays, a few reports on news events, and even a poem. Most essays discuss some element of the difference between awareness and acceptance, or what autism means to the author. My favorite is a fascinating piece on what life is like for someone for whom language is a skill that must be climbed to every day, like scaling a mountain, and it cannot quite capture the beautiful range of sensory experience the author encounters.
I feel this anthology is a little lopsided, as one essay takes up 57% of the book, while all others are 1-5%. It was a bit overwhelming to me personally, but maybe that's just my own experience with autism.
This is a collection of writings on autism. I was under the impression that all the contributors were autitic when I began reading. While the majority were autistic writers, not all were. While there is good stuff in this book for those of us wanting to learn from autistic voices, there is also some less than useful stuff. I would not recommend this book for those beginning the autism journey.