Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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The themes in this book are of interest to me, particularly the exploration of Limburg’s own experience with autism, as, like so many other things in life, we are still only beginning to understand from the perspective of female presentation. The poet and novelist was well into adulthood when she finally got the diagnosis that made sense of the past three decades.

Letters To My Weird Sisters | Joanne Limburg - NetGalley Letters To My Weird Sisters | Joanne Limburg - NetGalley

That being said, it is fully Joanne Limburgs prerogative to place focus on whomever she sees fit in a book of her own making. As a whole the discussion on motherhood was wonderful, however some discomfort arose when Autism mums became centralised. This book was so well-conceived and so well-written, and just overall super genuine and thoughtful—I was kind of surprised to find that I actually have no notes for this one.Her bold, unique exploration of autism reflects centuries of prejudice and more recent and shameful care scandals involving autistic people.

Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism - Goodreads

autistic = perseverating on details others discard, as in a poem: the tension between the poetic line and its grammar'. Once you have been pushed outside the first person plural, anything might be done to you, anything might happen.Today she has learnt that the version of femininity she rejected is equally likely to be “studied and perfectly reproduced by some autistic girls”. Limburg seamlessly weaves her own experiences as a 'misfit' into the stories of women from history who today might be regarded as autistic. And not only in foreign towns; they would stop and stare and nudge one another – ‘look at her’ – even in England, in Piccadilly or Lewes.

Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Book Review: Joanne Limburg’s Letters to My Weird Sisters: On

Her friend said she had Asperger Syndrome, an autism spectrum diagnosis then (less now) applied to people who might experience some challenges but who displayed high intelligence and unimpaired language skills. Seriously, all six letters covered the main themes and topics associated with womanhood/femininity and neurodivergency/disability (esp. Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books.

So I’m afraid I went ahead and did all those things, as if I were – shock horror – an ACTUAL PERSON. There is so much to love about this book, particularly for anybody already interested in any of the subject matters explored. This heartfelt, deeply compassionate and wholly original work humanises women who have so often been dismissed for their differences, and will be celebrated by ‘weird sisters’ everywhere. The letter to Frau V speaks to Limburg’s experience as a disabled mother and the child of a mother who did her best to advocate for her daughter in a society that offered absolutely no recourse to the kind of help and support she and her child needed. I had a duty to bear witness… to remember, to make sure that your memories and names would never be erased as your living bodies and minds had been.

Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism - Goodreads Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism - Goodreads

Even as Limburg refers to the work of non-binary activists within the text, she fails to acknowledge her non-binary and trans male siblings who have lived a lot of the same formative experiences as cis women. Found this hard to get into at first just because of the style it’s written (each chapter is a letter from the author to another woman of history with autism) but once I did it was great. I thought at some point I would get used to the second-person letters to various "weird sisters" in history, but I never did. I think it ended up being an impersonal attempt at combining personal stories with those of the people Limburg wrote to.That’s as good a definition of autism as I’ve ever read, and reminds me of the value of the unclassified routes down which our autistic brains so often travel. Her academic ability helped compensate for her social struggles, and she soothed anxiety by picking obsessively at her skin, which deepened her sense of shame over her appearance.