Book Review

Autism is one of those issues about which no one whose lives it touches takes a neutral position. Like the issue of disability at large there is a divide between those who see it as an individual problem which the medical profession is out to cure and those who look at disability as an aspect of their identity and seek accommodation rather than cure. Gravity Pulls You In (Woodbine House, 2010) is one attempt to add civility and perspective to the conversation. In the book's introduction editor Kyra Anderson spells out one of the ways in which people divide around autism. Many parents look at autism as something their child has and, as a result, are looking for a cure. Autism advocates, on the other hand, tend to see autism as "a fundamental part of who they are", and parents who agree with them, will say that their child is autistic.

The subtitle of Gravity Pulls You In: Perspectives on Parenting Children on the Autism Spectrum sets up the parameters that the editors, Anderson and Vicki Forman, are working within. The book consists of essays written by parents who are relaying their experiences interspersed with poetry, also by parents with children on the autism spectrum. The threefold division of the book loosely reflects what Anderson calls "the threefold journey: discovery/diagnosis, fear/grief, acceptance/lessons learned" that these writers have been through with their children. What binds the book together is the common experience of having a child on the autism spectrum. As Chantal Sicile-Kira says in her essay, "It happens to us all. At some point or another, we become members of a club we never dreamed of joining. Membership is bestowed upon us whether we want it or not."

The members of this club have a variety of experiences to relate, many of which overlap, collage-like into common themes, so that the interested reader may as easily approach the book as a sampler, choosing the style or subject that interests her, as read the book straight through, without any loss to the spirit of the collection.

Janet Kay's piece, "A Child Blinks" might be a good place for the reader unfamiliar with autism to begin. Kay's account of her son Michael's development and her corresponding experience as a parent touches on many of the common themes. One is what a parent's mind goes through on hearing a diagnosis of autism. Another is the implications of a label that follows a child and his family through life. Kay writes, "The road of life has been hard for our family, nearly impassable at times. It has been marked with clinical charts and disclaimers put up like roadblocks in our way. Words like Autism, Asperger's, Pervasive Development Disorder are always lurking around the bend as reminders of the child our Michael will never be."

Almost all of the selections zero in on difficulties children with autism have in communications and the resulting reactions that cause them to have difficulty responding in conventional ways socially. Schools tend to be a particular cauldron of problems for autistic children and their parents. In Michael's case, Kay relates the story of how after stuffing ravioli into his pocket from the school lunch and then trying to bury it in the schoolyard, he responded to the teacher who caught him by growling. At the same time, example after example come up in the essays where the child's non-conventional ways of thinking and viewing the world lead them to make very insightful statements. To quote Kay again:

"Look" he [Michael] said recently as we were riding in the car. "There's a professional building. The other buildings must feel so inferior."

One of the task of Gravity Pulls You In, of course, is to show that despite some of the similarities of experience that link the parents represented in this volume together, there is also great variety. Carolyn Walker's "Evolution of a Fairy" considers autism and sexuality, Emily Willingham's "String Theory" discusses her son's Aspergers in terms that she draws from her career as a scientist, and the title of James Ralph Savarese's short "You're Adopting Whom?" speaks for itself.

Perhaps the most masterful essay in this collection, though, is the final selection, James Wilson's "The Family Gangsta." Wilson's piece is written as a narrative that, given another context, could easily be mistaken for fiction. Early in the piece Wilson says, "I've earned my right to be sardonic." In this essay, he makes full use of it. The essay centers around the author's experience accompanying his autistic twenty-six year old son Sam and his social club composed of young men with various disabilities on their first ever Boys Night Out to Hooters. Sam's "current obsessions are severe weather, especially tornados, and rap music." As anyone who has had a comparable experience can guess - all bets are off. Wilson's irreverent account of the event, however is underlain by a deep love and understanding of his son, as the ending to the essay demonstrates.

Sam and I are the last to leave. He's made it this far without a serious gaffe. But suddenly he reaches out and takes our server's hand and looks deeply into her eyes. "If you were president, you'd be Babe-raham Lincoln," he says, repeating a line from the movie Wayne's World.

She laughs. "Thank you - I think!"

I breathe a sigh of relief. He could have repeated his favorite line from Austin Powers: Goldmember. The one about shagging!

"Did I blow my cover?" he asks on the way out the door, a big grin on his face. I have to laugh. "No, we did well."

At that Sam says, "Bust a move!" and does a hip-hop dance shuffle on the deck. Then he heads for the ramp that will take him to the shore, with me following along behind.

From Wordgathering's point of view, one of the really nice things about Gravity Pulls You In is the inclusion of poetry. In contrast to some of the more pragmatic writing of the prose pieces, the poetry in this volume does what poetry does best, strikes right at the emotional heart of an issue. Although including poetry about autism by writers who are not themselves autistic inevitably draws fire from some quarters, Anderson and Forman are able to circumvent this problem because of the structure of the book. As a book in which parents are discussing the effects of having an autism spectrum child on the family, the writers do not pretend to speak for the autistic person. As a result, there are no first person poems supposedly in the voice of a child with autism. The voices are strictly those of the parents themselves.

For the modest amount included, poetry is well represented through the inclusion of quality poets like Barbara Crooker, Bobbi Lurie and Grey Brown. Since Gravity is more of an organized collage than a narrative, one way of approaching the book is to sample the poetry selections first. This gives the reader new to literature on autism a sense of some of the issues in a compact but compelling way.

In "How to Talk to an Autistic Child" Kimberly Farrar explains:

The autistic child looks down, but sees everything
Every glimmer in the sidewalk, every strand
of your blonde hair.

Do something physical and silent.

As Grey Brown observes, common noises can be intolerable to a child with autism.

Speaking to the blades
of our raring attic fan,
she commands,
Off noise.
Off noise to the noise in her head
to the grating of nerves
the sizzle of synapses not quite connecting.

The result is that, parents often face the challenge of having to be an apologist for their children in public. Barbara Crooker writes:

They could not take
the stone out in public,
had to keep it home,
let it sing songs
in its own strange language,
syllables of schist and shale.

One of the most interesting poems is Aileen Murphy's "Proverbs 13:24." It is really a meditation on how this Biblical imperative to be strict and punitive in child-rearing has insinuated itself into society, from evangelical Bible fundamentalists to psychologists,and of the damage that it causes for the child with autism.

Perhaps the spirit of the entire book is summed up in the last stanza of Bobbi Lurie's "And the Shoes Will Take Us There in Spite of the Circumference":

I bend down, hold him so tight in my arms
So tight the green trees
So tight the blue and distant distant
Shape of my epiphany (were it half round, half yellow)
My son's small body, his heart pounds against my chest and this world
Of detritus and oblivious footnotes
How the fluid gold floats
How sound fills
Space and captures the tiniest beyond
Particles, waves,
Mass of sunlight wrapped around our legs
Our hands

Gravity Pulls You In is a book that need not be taken as a whole, since any individual piece could resonate with a particular reader; however, if it is considered as a whole, two questions arise that one might want to ask Anderson and Forman. The first is why, aside from the obvious fact that he has autism, the editors asked John Elder Robison to write the introduction. This has nothing to do with the quality of the writing itself, but of the perspective. As Robison himself says, "I thought I could contribute a story from the special needs perspective, but as I read what others have written I see that my experience was fundamentally different." Robison was not diagnosed with Asperger's until much later in life and despite dropping out of high school and having tough times when he was young, "yet I also realized the success I enjoyed as an adult was real and that it was not going away." Moreover, his own son went undiagnosed and had a similar experience. He concludes about his own life:

There was no sense of loss, because I never possessed what "autism" is supposed to have "taken away" from me. I started with a set of abilities and I built on them. Sure, I may have had less ability in some areas than other kids, and it sometimes hurt to realize that, but I believe we all make the most of what we have. What else could I do?"

He ends by questioning whether all of the knowledge that is now being made available to parents is really more of a burden than a help. "They see and imagine all manner of things their disabled kids (us) are lacking and they suffer terribly for us...But does this awareness, focus, and worry produce a better kid? Or does it just produce a more stressed parent? I really don't know." It is a very curious introduction to a book that by its very publication presumes that it will be helpful.

The second question is why the editors not only allow some of its contributors to substitute such email handles as MothersVox, Mama Mara, Drama Mama or even Anonymous for their real names, but place three of these as the first three entries in the book. If the authors of individual pieces have a legitimate reason to fear seeing their names in print, they could have followed Mary Ann Evans' lead and called themselves George Eliot. While this may sound like a small issue, publishing an article by "Drama Mama" simply diminishes the seriousness with which it can be taken. And this is a book that should be taken seriously.

College professors are known to joke that saying a paper "fills a needed gap" is code for saying that it has no real merit or purpose. Gravity Pulls You In, however, truly does fill a needed gap. While it is true that not many of the pieces in it are likely show up in next years Pushcart Prize anthology, they are readable, enjoyable, informative and, for parents who have children on the autism spectrum, bond-building. The book corrals into one place writings about parenting children on the autism spectrum, and that, in itself is valuable.