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A Memoir of Autism and Adoption: On the Meaning of Family and the Politics of Neurological Difference
UNKNOWN
June 2007
On Sale: May 22, 2007
496 pages
ISBN: 1590511298
EAN: 9781590511299
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A testament to uncommon devotion and common possibilities. "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.
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