Joana

Joana’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (417)
currently-reading‎ (0)
read‎ (243)
did-not-finish‎ (11)
2024‎ (103)
non-fiction‎ (62)
pre-goodreads‎ (62)
other-cultures‎ (57)
classics‎ (56)
family-stories‎ (53)
ireland‎ (52)
black-authors‎ (49)

feminist‎ (49)
lgbt‎ (49)
2025‎ (44)
women-in-translation‎ (38)
post-apocalyptic-dystopian‎ (33)
short‎ (32)
favorites‎ (29)
book-club‎ (28)
historical-fiction‎ (28)
mens-fiction‎ (28)
booker-prize‎ (27)
2023‎ (26)

between-cultures‎ (26)
weird-books‎ (26)
nd‎ (25)
womens-prize‎ (25)
working-class‎ (24)
japan‎ (21)
fantasy‎ (20)
mothers‎ (20)
for-the-year-thats-in-it‎ (16)
nigeria‎ (14)
old-adult-fiction‎ (14)
indigenous‎ (13)

grief‎ (12)
speculative-fiction‎ (11)
republic-of-consciousness‎ (9)
2026‎ (8)
biographies-memoirs‎ (8)
korea‎ (8)
palestinian‎ (8)
calm-reflective‎ (7)
female-rage‎ (7)
jewish‎ (7)
cli-fi‎ (6)
gothic‎ (6)

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“I had naively thought that my diagnosis was all the evidence I needed to obtain the assistance I was asking for–I hadn’t realized that I had to perform the role of someone with that diagnosis. I hadn’t realized that this role necessitated that I display some kind of perceptible inferiority to my assessor. I had often failed at being a woman. Now, apparently, I was failing to be autistic.”
― Joanne Limburg, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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“What I understand this to mean is that adulthood is not a developmental stage but a social position, and as such cannot be attained or maintained without the support and acknowledgement of others. And what others are acknowledging is not the state of one’s innermost psychological, mental or spiritual development–whatever that may mean–but the observable adherence to certain norms, of speech, of behaviour, of appearance, and the successful performance of certain roles.”
― Joanne Limburg, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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“Sometimes I tell people that moving through society as a Jew for fifty years has been the perfect preparation for learning to move through society as a late-diagnosed autistic person: in both cases, you disclose the fact, and then the person you’ve disclosed it to gets to have fun deciding whether you look it or not.”
― Joanne Limburg, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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“If a woman does not comply, then she is the problem, the ‘feminist killjoy’, the Old Dragon, the Battleaxe, the Termagant, the Nippy Sweety, the Uppity Cow, the Bitch. I’ve come to understand all that, and also to understand that ableism works in the same way, that as an autistic person I am not supposed to make assertions that cause non-autistic people–parents of autistic children, autistic professionals–to feel bad about themselves. If, as an autistic person, I make a non-autistic person feel bad about themselves in relation to autism, it must be because I am a defective person, lacking both an adult understanding of my own condition and empathy for the individuals who are trying so patiently to cope with the consequences of it. I see this very argument–if I must dignify it with that word–used on social media again and again, whenever an autistic person seeks to advocate for autistic people as a group.”
― Joanne Limburg, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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“When I was small, I wanted to be a boy. No, it was more than that–I thought that I had to be a boy. I understand that there are children who refuse to identify with the sex on their birth certificate because they are trans, but I’ve never thought that was the case with me. It was more that the assumption everywhere, in the early seventies, seemed to be that women were lesser beings than men, and girls lesser beings than boys, that they did lesser things and lived lesser lives, and I did not see why I should accept those lesser conditions. There was a whole world out there for me to observe and explore and think about, and I had no interest in interrupting my activities so that the world could look at me and judge whether I was pretty or nice or good–whether, in other words, I was becoming a girl. Why on earth would I want to be one of those? Why would I, when I was so much more interested in looking than in being looked at?”
― Joanne Limburg, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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