In the midst of all the covid-19 craziness, life goes on. It’s still Lent, for about another week, and there will still be Easter, and it’s still Autism Acceptance Month now that it’s April! This year, my focus will be on books of fiction written by and/or containing autistic main characters.
Why fiction? There are a lot of good memoirs written by autistic individuals, and non-fiction books addressing autism, but fiction in particular taps into the imagination and vision of the reader. It opens up new perspectives and potentials, allowing the reader to enter into new worlds, relationships, and experiences. So for the neurotypical reader, encountering autistic characters in fiction (assuming they are well-written!) can make autism understandable, relatable, and more human, which will then hopefully translate to the real world. For the autistic reader, those characters can give them people to identify with when they may be surrounded by neurotypical society in real life and in most books.
Another advantage of fiction is that it is more likely to be read by people who aren’t interested specifically in autism – at least not enough to seek out a non-fiction book on the topic – but who are looking for a good story to immerse themselves in. In this way, books with autistic characters can help bring awareness and acceptance of autism to a more mainstream audience.
It’s not so helpful, however, to read fiction with autistic characters if those characters are stereotyped, flat, or defined by their atypical behaviors rather than shown authentically as human beings with complex internal lives and emotional ranges. For that reason, fiction written by autistic authors is particularly valuable, as these authors tend to have more reliable insight into the processing and perspective of autistic characters than neurotypical authors have. It is possible for non-autistic authors to write autistic characters well, of course, and I think it’s important for fiction writers to try to write from a variety of perspectives, but in my experience autistic characters written by autistic authors are much more accurate to life and multi-dimensional.
For those reasons, most of the books I’ll be reviewing this month are #ownvoices autistic fiction – books with an autistic protagonist or important secondary character written by an autistic author – and the exceptions will fit into either one or the other of those categories. I’ve written three reviews already, I’ve read two more books that I need to write up, and I have 2-3 more in reserve – but if you have any suggestions of books you’ve loved or that sound interesting, please let me know! It was difficult to find books in this category and so I’d love to be able to put together a more comprehensive list by the end of the month.
I’m linking up with Kelly again this week – head over and check out the rest of the linkup!
little thoughts 
EJ Copperman writes mysteries with Samuel Hoenig as the protagonist – he has Apsperger’s. I find them very good.
For a kid, a Boy called Bat trilogy by Elana Arnold.
Though I do not have a person on the spectrum in my household, I am related to several, so I prefer these types of characters who are not just defined by the differences.
Thank you for the recommendations! I will have to look into them. I remember coming across a Boy Called Bat and liking the writing style, and I don’t remember why I stopped reading it so I’ll have to look it up again.
I agree that one does not need to be autistic to value authentically written autistic characters who are real people instead of DSM descriptions! It is similar to how we all benefit as a society when we read fiction with characters who are people of color, or from different socioeconomic classes, or with disabilities: it helps us see people who are different from ourselves from the inside, closer to the way we see ourselves and people similar to us.