Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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I've only known I'm autistic for about a year, and I'm really starting to dig into some deeper ideas about how people relate to autism and how we fit into this world that doesn't make space for us. Limburg describes movingly her own struggles as a new mother and the pressure of society’s expectations…Through such delicately intertwined experiences, Limburg quietly shouts for change. Jeg tror det er sundt for mange os at høre om handicappede mennesker som vi måske ikke selv identificerer og jeg tror at dette er en god måde at starte. Her letter to Frau V, the (possibly autistic) mother to Fritz, one of Hans Asperger’s autistic patients, reaches far into the culture of motherhood over the past decades and I found it very affecting. The author relates to the four women and finds common ground with them, she empathises and apologises for the wrongs that these women experienced.

Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. Psychologists and psychiatrists sometimes like to argue that their language is value-neutral, but I don't believe that language which people use to describe other people could ever be.

For someone on the outside (but not entirely), I am - and others, too, I’m sure - often thirsty for more understanding and insight than a Twitter post can provide. 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.

Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books. By ‘Autism mums’ I mean non-autistic mothers of autistic children, many of which are wonderful (thankfully mine included), but they (‘autism parents’, not just the mums of course) often overshadow autistic voices, attempting to speak for us instead. Limburg describes movingly her own struggles as a new mother and the pressure of society's expectations. The way Limburg then turns these moments into a chance for connection with the woman her letter is addressed to, and into something poignant about the changes needed in society to support people going through similar issues around childbirth, is genuinely powerful on several occasions.

these brave women struggled on the page, as they tried to negotiate between the felt pressure of their own perceptions and experiences and the established forms of language which resisted their attempts to express them. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. 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 next chapter went back to a far too meandering and personal narrative, when she was meant to be writing about Adelheid Bloch.

through letters to women considered 'weird' (limburg arguing who may in fact have autistic traits making them considered 'weird') she explores her own autistic experience and experience of womanhood, and the intersection of ableism and sexism, and therefore disability rights and feminism, throughout history. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. 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. 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.the juxtaposition of historical, anecdotal, and sociological perspectives significantly enriched limburg’s examination of the intersection of ableism and misogyny. How as women we are held to certain expectations of how we act and behave and are constantly reminded and policed on that. Limberg’s letter to Katharina Kepler, a 16th century woman accused of witchcraft was also, at times, a difficult read. Yes, we do have to say so every time, because every time we see another woman's body objectified, it is by implication an attack on our personhood, and when we are attacked in this way, we have every right to re-assert that personhood by refusing that objectification.