Like Color to the Blind - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 038525556X ISBN 13: 9780385255561

Inhaltsangabe

Like Colour To The Blind

Autistic author Donna Williams never knew what it was to feel her hand and her leg at the same time let alone experience herself and other person within one moment of processing. Nor did she know the difference between real felt communication and the push button learned 'talking doll' responses and charicatures that made up almost all of her so called 'purposeful' communication and actions with others.

Now, in her new relationship with Ian, an Asexual man with 'multiple personalities' and somewhere on the Autistic Spectrum, finding out what is real from what is not becomes their life's quest.

With hilarious and reckless results they develop an NLP like strategy called 'checking' which appeals only to the feeling part of the brain and gets around stored learned responses. This 'checking' essentially triggers the thoughts, feelings and choices of the 'real self' buried under society-endorsed robotic facades and socially reinforced learned charicatures.

Like chainsaws in the rainforest of their lives, they pledge to follow through at all costs with what they find are their real wants and likes. The results are that they throw out much of the household furniture, their clothes, the contents of the cupboards and then realise they want to be married (but fail to check that it is actually to each other!) so, within a two week very Autistic marriage preparation, they recklessly marry one another!

Intertwined with their hilarious and surreal story is the story of their friendship with Alex, a functionally non-verbal teenager who knows all about being rather multiple, Autistic and out of control of one's own appearance, utterances and actions. Alex has just managed to communicate for the first time in his life through typing and afraid of being left behind by his reckless friends, he pleads movingly with great power and beauty through this only voice he has, not to be left behind. Along the way Donna, Ian and Alex all journey into the world of Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome and discover the world beyond visual fragmentation, meaning blindness, face blindness and fragmented bodies as they see each other and the world as cohesive, whole and three dimensional for the first time.

A remarkable addition to Donna Williams' first two international bestsellers in the mainstream publishing world and now sold internationally, you will laugh and you will cry, you will cringe and you will cheer your way through Like Color To The Blind.

Über diesen Titel

Review:

The artistically gifted Williams continues to build a bridge between 'my world' and 'the world'. -- Publisher's Weekly-praise for her last book, Somebody Somewhere

From the Author:

What Donna says about writing Autobiography
Why write about oneself?
Everyone has a different reason.

I wrote the first of my four autobiographical works, Nobody Nowhere, on the verge of suicide after a wild half-crazy life with abuse, homelessness and ultimately hope for belonging only to find I was terrified of real closeness. I had a last inkling of hope that I couldn't truly say I'd tried my hardest to cope if I'd never fully disclosed the nature of my own private world. So I wrote out everything that mattered in my feelings and decided to give it to one child psychiatrist in the hope they could tell me what kind of mad I was and whether there was hope for answers and belonging. My intention was to then shred it, burn it and leave this world. Instead it was passed on to his colleague, then from her to her publisher, from him to an agent and from there out into the world it became a number one international bestseller. But why write three more?

My second autobiography, Somebody Somewhere is so completely different to the first and exposed a world of such different, forgotten citizens of the world, that the story had to be told, to give a voice to the voiceless, to be a starting point for solidarity and building bridges. It too became a number one international bestseller.

The third work, Like Color to The Blind exposed three very controversial areas that I felt strongly about; the visual fragmentation of visual perceptual disorders, the importance of augmented and alternative communication systems for voiceless people and the search for selfhood buried underneath stored learning, something so many people struggle with in silence until its often too late.

The fourth book, Everyday Heaven was about the simultaneous discovery of sexuality, journeys in orientation and at the same time coping with loss in a two year span in which I lost three of the closest people in my life.

So I wrote each for very different reasons, to hope and to survive, to shout and to stay sane.

Über diese Auflage

• ISBN 10: 038525556X
• ISBN 13: 9780385255561
• Einband: Hardcover