Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption: On the Meaning of Family and the Politics of Neurological Difference

by Ralph James Savarese

"Why would someone adopt a badly abused, nonspeaking, six-year-old from foster care?" So the author was asked at the outset of his adoption-as-a-first-resort adventure. Part love story, part political manifesto about "living with conviction in a cynical time," the memoir traces the development of DJ, a boy written off as profoundly retarded and now, six years later, earning all "A's" at a regular school. Neither a typical saga of autism nor simply a challenge to expert opinion, Reasonable People illuminates the belated emergence of a self in language. And it does so using DJ's own words, expressed through the once discredited but now resurgent technique of facilitated communication. In this emotional page-turner, DJ reconnects with the sister from whom he was separated, begins to type independently, and explores his experience of disability, poverty, abandonment, and sexual abuse. "Try to remember my life," he says on his talking computer, and remember he does in the most extraordinarily perceptive and lyrical way.

Asking difficult questions about the nature of family, the demise of social obligation, and the meaning of neurological difference, Savarese argues for a reasonable commitment to human possibility and caring.

Genres: Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Memoir, Nonfiction, Adoption, Disability, Mental Health, Psychology

496 pages, Hardcover

First published May 17, 2007

Reviews

[Jess Hodgman Hesselberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about the first person I ever worked with who had autism. It is written by DJ's adoptive father and I am honored in the back of the book. Very special to me, but also a great emotionally-driven resource for parents and families who are affected by autism and other childhood/lifespan differences.

Be prepared for a heart-wrenching story of a boy who was abused for years in foster care before being adopted by the Savareses. They are truly remarkable people and parents.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty hard book to read. I knew it wouldn't be all happiness and light since it's about a couple who adopts an autistic child when he's 6 years old. At the time of the adoption DJ had been in foster care for about 3 or 4 years and was completely non-verbal and still wearing diapers. After he's adopted by this couple they have him potty-trained in a few weeks and soon he learns to read and is going to regular classes in elementary school. But, when he learns how to read, he can then communicate through typing on a computer. Once he learns to communicate all of his past comes pouring out - all kinds of abuse he suffered in foster care. It's pretty hard to read about everything he went through, but it makes you wonder what would have happened to him if he hadn't been adopted by this couple? Since he was non-verbal most people assumed that he was retarded and could never learn anything. But, by the end of the book he's in 6th grade and actually wrote the last chapter himself. I think the story of how far DJ comes with the help of his adoptive parents is awesome, but a lot of the chapters where he is exploring his past abuse are really hard to read. I would have given the book more stars if it was a little shorter - it's hard to want to minimize what happened to him in foster care, but do we really need like 4 chapters of how much his life sucked?

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite an interesting and educational read. I found it difficult to read at times. I bought it assuming it was just a memoir but it's also a bit of a text book so I didn't look forward to reading it often. I have a son with a mild form of autism and the plot intrigued me. I just had to soldier on and read it. The final chapter written by DJ was amazing! This shows how important the proper education is for ALL children, especially those with special needs. I'd love to hear more about the progress made since this book.

[Erika Worley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting case for me because I grew up around the people who wrote this book and who the book is about. It was very eye-opening because it revealed so much that I didn't know about my friend and classmate DJ. I knew that he had been adopted, but it never really occurred to me that he might have gone through foster care or survived abuse of various kinds. Currently he's traveling around the country for screenings of the documentary Deej that was shot partly in high school and partly in college by documentary film creator Rob. As of this moment, I have yet to watch the film myself since I am nervous to see my younger self on camera, but I am so glad to say that DJ has helped bring this film into being, that he is growing into a successful adult, and that his parents are still a great support to him.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ralph Savarese is passionate. He starts his introduction in a hard-hitting way, addressing a controversy that I knew nothing about. He has a lot of opinions, shall I say, judgements about people. Especially his dad. And certain autism experts. I think he wanted this memoir to show the good, the bad and the ugly. He didn't want himself to be portrayed as perfect.
But this is his son's story and Savarese tells it well. The almost unbelievable story of a non-speaking autistic boy who went into foster care and then was adopted by Savarese and his wife when the boy (DJ) was five. Because Savarese's wife already knew a lot about autism, they pushed immediately for "inclusion," what could also be called mainstreaming. They got a lot of pushback but they made it happen and their son started to flourish.
The book shows all the details of their son's journey, which as it turned out, contained a ton of trauma when he was in foster care. Savarese unfolds those details to the reader as he and his wife learned them. In other words he doesn't tell you everything right up front.
By teaching their son literacy, Savarese and his wife eventually taught their son to type. DJ needed to be assisted - someone needed to support his wrist. And hence the controversy. DJ started to express himself, to talk about his feelings, he started to have a "self". It just wasn't the spoken word. But he was expressing himself. Apparently this method (called facilitated communication) is wildly controversial and attacked. Some people dismiss it out of hand.
Savarese, and then his son DJ, asks over and over for the marginalized to be included in society. For all people. But for people like DJ to be given a chance, and a voice.
After finishing the book, I went onto YouTube and watched a different boy communicating with this method. I was blown away. This was clearly an autistic boy, nonverbal, complete with the flapping and other autistic behaviors, who was answering questions by writing in perfect English. Though his mother was holding his shoulder, it was clear to me that she was not influencing his choices in any way.
And reading the last chapter, written by DJ, I was also blown away. His language is very poetic. I find it very moving. As an ESL teacher, I was also interested in his syntax and adjective positioning and other non-perfect-English choices/mistakes that my own students make.
I then went onto the internet to see what's happening with DJ now. (The book is ten years old.) He became the first nonverbal autistic person to attend Oberlin College in Ohio. And a movie has been made about him. And he is a playwright.
He and his dad make a passionate plea for inclusion.
His parents sound amazing. They dealt with a ton of anxiety and fear on DJ's part. It wasn't easy. But they stayed as consistent as they could. They told him repeatedly that they loved him and that they would never abandon him.
A child who's been given up by his parents and then experienced abuse has a lot to work out. His parents were there for him. So inspiring!
Thanks, Savarese, for sharing this story. Very moving.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't decide if this book should be rated a three star or a four star read.

1 - It was REALLY hard to read. The topic was heartbreaking and I couldn't read more than a chapter or two in one sitting or else I would get depressed for the rest of the day. Tragic, tragic story of what can happen to a child in foster care who is both nonverbal and autistic.

2 - It was also hard to read because it was more than a memoir. It was also a political and social commentary and I didn't feel well enough versed in politics to really follow the author's tangents. I wish it had been more tightly edited so that it was more memoir, less political ranting.

3 - The first half of the book covered DJ's early time with his new parents. There was a lot of information and stories about how DJ was adopted, his early weeks and months adjusting to his new family, and the struggles to get him into an inclusive classroom. However, as the book progressed, it started skimming events and I felt like I was missing DJ's growth. I was told he's growing in various ways, but not shown. If the political ranting had been reduced, there would have been more time and space to show how DJ developed.

Overall, it was an insightful look into adopting and parenting a child who cannot speak and has autism, as well as a history of both neglect and abuse. It was an exposure to a world I knew existed but hadn't taken a close look at.

[Iamshadow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if you never read any other in depth book about facilitated/augmentative communication, adoption, disability rights, autism activism, or autism/disability in society, you should read this one.

DJ was an abused, non-verbal, severely autistic foster kid when the Savareses started working with him, teaching him basic sign and providing an environment of unconditional love and trust. Their journey to help DJ heal, communicate and become a member of their family is a long, complicated one, and will change your perceptions of disability, autism, family and self.

Even if you’re an FC cynic, give this book a go. For further homework, watch a copy of Sue Rubin’s documentary Autism Is A World, or read Lucy Blackman’s Lucy’s Story. FC isn’t the cut and dried ‘fraud’ that you may have been told it is. As always, the truth is grey rather than black and white, and there are a whole bunch of non-verbal autists who have progressed to unassisted typing, or even to speech.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finally finished this, a memoir by a father who adopts a nonverbal child with Autism who uses facilitated communication. At points beautiful.. but the author's tone was so annoying and made him so unlikeable in my eyes. Also about 300 pages longer than it needed to be

[Eclarep]

Haven't read it yet but the author is a professor at Grinnell College, where I got my bachelor's degree.

[Theresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's really hard to get past the author's self-congratulatory tone. The contempt with which he wrote of his son's bio father's decision to relinquish custody to the care system really bothered me. The author is completely oblivious to the privilege he, a college professor, and his wife, who has a Masters in special ed, might have in terms of resources to raise their son.

I think he also lets his own experience blind himself to the issues with FC. The failure of FC to pass testing doesn't actually tell us anything about people with autism, because that's not what being tested. It's the technique that is being tested, and tests show that the facilitator can influence the results. That makes the technique less than useful. Imagine an autocorrect that you can't go back and fix and you can see why. While I'm a proponent of non-verbal people being exposed to typing as a form of augmented communication, I'm bothered by his handwaving of the issues with FC.

Combined, the two give you an overall feeling of someone who wrote a book to show off how much better he is than the rest of us for seeing his son's potential, rather than someone trying to advocate for those overlooked by society.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is amazing how far DJ has come in this book. All the things that happened to him would've been enough to stymie anyone. The book sure does make you wonder how many other children/adults are stuck in their minds with no way to express themselves.
DJ wrote some really good poetry - better than a lot of adults could do. And I loved the poem the authr wrote for his brother & sister-in-law after the death of their child.
I did have a hard time following some of the writing - I think it was just too technical for me, or I just don't know enough about autism & trauma and how they affect a person.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely had some very scholarly moments that I thought actually balanced really nicely with the memoir itself. I cried multiple times in this one as DJ’s story and his family’s experience unfolded.

[Alyson Bardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, the final chapter, by DJ, is the most important. This is not an easy, cheery book -- it's frank to a fault -- but I found it engrossing and moving.

[C · Rating 1 out of 5]

Self-indulgent saviorism. Also, adopted people's stories are not adopters' stories to tell (or profit from).

[Shana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book touches on a lot of very important and interesting issues, however I had some trouble with the execution. First for the positive. As a social worker who has worked in the field of child welfare for many years and has also worked with families of kids with autism and cognitive disabilities, I thought this book covered a lot of important ground. The author and his wife did an amazing thing by adopting DJ out of foster care and in the process, they not only gave him a home, they gave him a life. I enjoyed the part of the book that was about how they met and adopted DJ. I also thought that the book made an important point about trauma and people with disabilities-just because you don't have the verbal skills to express it, does not mean that you don't experience trauma. This book made me interested in pursuing how I can use my LCSW to work with kids with autism and cognitive disabilities who have experienced trauma. I also thought this book made a lot of good points about the benefits of inclusion in education. I also thought that the discussion of Facilitated Communication was very interested, given the controversy surrounding this technique. It definitely gave me a new perspective on facilitated communication and I am interested in learning a lot more about it. One of the best parts of the book is the last chapter, which is written by DJ himself. This book did make me think a lot about how I treat people with cognitive disabilities in my own work and about how they are treated in society. Now for the negative-I didn't like the way this book was written. It suffered from a real lack of editing. At times, it was a memoir about DJ. This is when the book was at its strongest. At other times, the author was on his soapbox, talking about politics and things that probably only make sense to university professors with PhD's in something obscure. There were various detours into poetry which did not quite fit. Part of the book was also reminiscent of a graduate school psychology paper. This book could have been half of the length that it was if the author had had a decent editor. Fortunately, I was able to skim through a lot of this extraneous nonsense and enjoy the core story about DJ. I still recommend this book, just be prepared to skip the extraneous parts. This may be the one book that would be better in an abridged audiobook format.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Savarese explores so many diverse topics in this book. It's not just about his family's experience with autism and all that goes with that - special education programs in school, facilitated communication, frustration with (and yet absolute love of) DJ, what autism is and what it means to be autistic - any one of which could fill an entire book. Yet he also explores our social service system for the poor, our health care system, our foster care system, what it means to be a family, and grief. And surprisingly, he does them justice - pointing out not only their flaws and good points, but also the grey area of emotion, how we react to them and why/how that shapes societal attitudes toward them.

Unfortunately, this wide scope and attention to detail were the book's downfall. The thing is huge. Huge! And sometimes Savarese goes on too long about something. Mainly this was the repetition of how DJ was abused and how this affected their everyday interactions with him and his ability to grow and learn. YES, WE GOT IT ALREADY! If this was literature, it might work as a way to both show and tell the reader what it's like to live with someone who fixates on an idea and repeats it. But this isn't literature, it's biography/non-fiction, and it just grated on my nerves.

Also, don't read the introduction. I almost didn't read the book after reading the intro. I was like, "this is going to be 700 pages of boring!" Luckily I decided to give it another try. Plus, he repeats most of the info again in the text, so you don't have to read it. Or read it when you're done with the book. (It's ok, I give you permission.)

If the topics I listed above don't interest you, this book probably won't either. But if they do, jump in and try it out.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir tells the story of the author and his wife adopting an autistic, abused, non-speaking boy from foster care. The challenges of adoption, the foster care system, disability and the debate for inclusion, and the author's own family crises are all included and covered with intelligence and kindness. The introduction starts off with a more defensive attitude than the rest of the book (defending the method of communication - typing with varying levels of assistance - that the boy learns to use), as in the rest of the book, I was impressed by the author's loving/respectful tone. I thought the story flowed expertly, and the inclusion of the boy's exact (typed) quotes was useful but not overdone (they can be hard to translate but it's important to the story). I learned a lot about the foster care system and why there are issues, and I admire the courage and patience of the author and his wife very much. My only critique would be that the poet side of the author comes out a bit too much...often an analogy might be well-crafted, but so poetic that it removed me from the flow of the story as my eyes went back to try to chew and digest the more complicated style that was inserted at times. Good read.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated the way this book ably and sensitively led me to think about pretty basic things in pretty fundamentally new ways. I appreciated a lot of other things about it, too, and even came around to appreciate Ralph Savarese's frequent use of sometimes strange, actually-funny-but-stated-seriously metaphors.
I do wish I hadn't made reading this book into a "project" - laboring through it, to finish it, at times when reading it felt like laboring. I attribute that feeling mostly to my obsessive desire to finish my "first book of the summer", and move on to others, not to RS' writing, but...I don't know; did anyone else briefly think, at the end of the book, "You've been going strong with no sign of stopping for 500+ pages now, so really, Ralph, why drop the ball at this particular point?" I guess he sort of says this himself, but.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a long, hard read and it's packed with solid, heart-filled information. This book covers many issues: autism, adoption, foster care/foster care system, trauma, facilitated communication (FC) and some of the politics of poverty and disablity discrimitation. WOW. No wonder it's a bit of a long read.

The author is a parent by choice and creative writer by trade, therefore his writing style is unique to anything I've ever read in the parent/autism arena.

The book has inspired me to read more authors whom are on the Autism Spectrum and to look into FC as a viable option for some children. It also gives me the continued hope that we just do not know everything about autism and that all children and adults should be treated with respect and lots of love.

Most of all, I've been able to reflect about what my own role is or might be, in a continued dream of a "RESONABLE SOCIETY."

[Valarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing story that covers development disabilities, inclusion in mainstream classrooms, foster care and adoption. I gave it four stars because I very much enjoyed reading about how the hero (DJ) overcomes his tumultuous past and uses his skill of typing to help other kids with autism. His father's writing, however, leaves much to be desired. At times "poetic," other times dense and scholarly, this book really isn't accessible to most of its intended audience. You need to have a good amount of university education in order to understand half the words Savarese uses, and I doubt anyone can appreciate his occasional forays into poetry. This would have been one of my favorite books ever if Saverese had just stuck to one style of writing, i.e. documentary or memoir.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book over a year ago and enjoyed it, but details are already fading. It was great bedtime reading because the sections I couldn't put down were sandwiched between more boring passages, so I was guaranteed to get sleepy within an hour and wouldn't stay up all night reading and wreck my sleep schedule. I learned a lot about autism, adoption, and foster care, but I've forgotten a lot as well. This is probably a book I will reread when I am in the mood to do so.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of this book is a poet, and so is his son. Though the son, DJ, has a very different style of communication, it is incredibly insightful. DJ is able to give us a window through his writing into how he views the world, and it is helpful in understanding why he sometimes has trouble with his behavior.

It was very hard for me as a tender-hearted mom to read about the abuse DJ suffered in foster care before his adoption by Ralph and Emily Savarese.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a summer or two since I read this book, but I loved it. It's such a powerful story of Savarese's love for his son. It's also terrifying for someone (me) who wants to work with children with disabilities, because all of the "politics of neurological difference" are just...ridiculous. The bureaucracy, the abuse, everything that Savarese and his wife go through to adopt and raise their son is just horrendous.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fascinating. It was really fun to read partially because I sorta know the author. It was also fun to read because it's such an interesting topic (autism) that I knew basically nothing about. My one complaint was that it could get a bit over the top academic referring to all sorts of scholarly works on autism etc, so I just skimmed those parts.

[Marka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book and was very interested by the topic. I think I made it about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through it before I stopped. I'm not sure why I stopped reading it. The "plot" did seem to die down a bit, maybe that was it. Or maybe I just let it sit on my nightstand too long before picking it back up. Either way, it is an amazing story and I'm glad to have read as much as I did.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated and experienced this book as a page turner in many ways. Savarese gets obscure sometimes (an academic intellectual) but provides amazing insight and passionate commitment to his son. I was interested in the role of identity politics in DJ's growth process. The writings from DJ MADE this book.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lengthy, dense, and at times disturbing, Reasonable People is worth the effort only for those with a strong interest in autism and abuse. As Savarese is a writer, the prose is smoother than most memoirs of the kind, and he includes a chapter by his adopted autistic son at the end. Especially provacative in the context of the Facilitated Communication scandal.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

DJ's story was quite compelling but this book was unnecessarily long and really could have used an editor. I think that having full transcripts of all communication with one's child might make it easy to get bogged down in the sheer volume and hard to cut things out in order to let a more concise picture emerge. I definitely found myself skimming parts.

[Danielle Deville · Rating 3 out of 5]

He was trying to say too much at once. It would have been better if he could have stuck with a few relevant themes and saved the more tangential stuff for later books rather than trying to cram it all in. I appreciate his passion and agree wholeheartedly with most of what he has to say, but I actually would have enjoyed this memoir more without all of the commentary.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with some of the other comments.. I feel this book covered a LOT of ground.. but regardless was an amazing story of love and trauma. I heard this author speak at a conference in Boston and really enjoyed it!