Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and AdoptionWatch an interview with DJ on CNN Listen to Ralph Savarese's interview on NPR's "The Diane Rehm Show" Visit the book's website: www.reasonable-people.com "Why would someone adopt a badly abused, nonspeaking, six-year-old from foster care?" So the author was asked at the outset of his adoption-as-a-first-resort adventure. Part love story, part political manifesto about "living with conviction in a cynical time," the memoir traces the development of DJ, a boy written off as profoundly retarded and now, six years later, earning all "A's" at a regular school. Neither a typical saga of autism nor simply a challenge to expert opinion, Reasonable People illuminates the belated emergence of a self in language. And it does so using DJ's own words, expressed through the once discredited but now resurgent technique of facilitated communication. In this emotional page-turner, DJ reconnects with the sister from whom he was separated, begins to type independently, and explores his experience of disability, poverty, abandonment, and sexual abuse. "Try to remember my life," he says on his talking computer, and remember he does in the most extraordinarily perceptive and lyrical way. Asking difficult questions about the nature of family, the demise of social obligation, and the meaning of neurological difference, Savarese argues for a reasonable commitment to human possibility and caring. |
Contents
Severe and Profound | 3 |
More | 31 |
Have You Tried In Vitro? or Whats in a Name? | 57 |
Copyright | |
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able anxiety autism began Biklen brother called Charlie Charlie's child cognitive cognitive disability disability DJ replied DJ seemed DJ typed DJ's Donna Williams Douglas Biklen Ellie Ellie's Emily asked Emily's facilitated communication fear feel Florida foster foster care friends Grinnell head hip replacement hurt imagine independent Iowa James and Eileen Jamie Burke jump kids kind knew Kyle language Larry Bissonnette Linney live look mind mother move nervous neurotypical night once parents pineoblastoma poem poking problem question remember response Rhonda Savarese screaming sister skating social someone speak story Sue Rubin talk teacher tell Temple Grandin therapy things thought tion tism Tito Mukhopadhyay told trampoline trauma trying Twachtman-Cullen understand walk woman word worried write Zoloft