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Title: Soon Will Come the Light: A View from Inside the Autism Puzzle by Thomas A. McKean, R. Wayne Gilpin, S. L. Cotton ISBN: 1-885477-11-2 Publisher: Future Horizons Pub. Date: July, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Gold Standard
Comment: Thomas A. Mckean's book is a joy to read full of warmth, wit and most especially charm. Every page captures his dynamite personality and the soul of a poet. Some sad things happened to Thomas, but even in these sad years, you can see young Thomas reaching out to the other kids in the insitution, in grace, dignity and compassion.
Some of my favorite parts in the book are about the perfect teddy bear, the college and first apartment experiences and falling in love and finding that true friend of the realm. Parents and professionals will also gain knowledge on SDI with the sections on hyper and hypo sensitivies and Thomas's unique way of making technology assist him to reach out always to the wider community of people.
In the beginning God created the sky and the earth. The earth was empty and had no form. Darkness covered the ocean, and God's spirit was moving over the water. Then God said, "Let there be light", and there was light. (Genesis)
Thank you Mr. Mckean for sharing your light with many readers. Thank you for all the doors you have opened for the children who will follow. Thank you for being an Educator, Advocate, Mentor and Friend. Thank you for a beautiful book that speaks to the heart and defines what humanity is.
Rating: 5
Summary: A gift from above
Comment: As the mother of an autistic child, this is a must read for any parent dealing with the heartbreaking diagnosis of Autism. Both parents and professionals will find this book to be very helpful. Thomas has so generously shared his very personal experience in order to help others understand this puzzling mystery. He has been kind enough to let us into his world, and brave enough to enter ours. He is a remarkable man with much courage, compassion, determination and sincerity. Thank you Thomas, many people will greatly benefit from your book. You are truly a gift from above.
Rating: 2
Summary: How to use autistics with no self-esteem in a few easy steps
Comment: This book starts out with introductions by various acquaintances of the author, including a lot of "Wow! That autistic thing *writes*!" hoopla that rivals the current hysteria over non-speaking autistic people's writing. Still, at the time it was published, it was probably the fourth narrative-autobiographical work by an autistic person widely published in America (by this time, Temple Grandin had published a book and Donna Williams had published two). This is understandable given the time.
The real beginning of the book opens with McKean's admission into an institution. I know I've read that section dozens of times. I still can't remember much of it, which means it was probably an accurate depiction. The only thing I remember at all was that McKean achieved a higher degree of camraderie and positive socialization with other inmates than I ever did in such places. My social position, with rare exceptions, tended to be one of four categories: Tolerated, bullied, left alone, and physically isolated. But if the descriptions have made me black them out as many times as I've read them, it's a pretty good clue that they're good descriptions.
The book then picks up with his life after the institution, in which he moved around between cheap apartments and experienced various failures in his personal life. After a particularly painful breakup with a girlfriend, he checked his hospital records to see what was written about him. He discovered that they said he had a "P.D.D.", and that this basically meant autism.
The chapter on discovering autism is, to me, one of the most interesting in the book -- and one of the most personally embarrassing. I remember well what it was like, nearly fresh out of institutions and other places in which I disappointed everyone, to emerge simultaneously into a full realization that I was autistic and a throng of parents begging me to narrate my life for their convenience. I remember the endless amounts of praise I got just for saying the simplest things, and people urging me to publish this or that work or join this or that committee, all the while telling me how miraculous it was that I communicated anything at all. And this is exactly what happened to McKean. Only, at the time of writing the book, he still swallowed the saccharine praise he was getting from all corners, as well as the nonsense that he'd somehow "come out" of autism. He became a national board member of the Autism Society of America, and he was invited to speak at conferences. Instant "autistic circus act" for him, instant cringeworthy remembrance for me.
The next two chapter are interesting in a different way. Unlike later books on autism, from a time when views on what autism is and isn't have become more consolidated, early books included a lot of things that weren't strictly autistic, but arguably made the accounts more well-rounded. He lists a number of common issues in autism: sensory issues, computers, facilitated communication, and the like, and tackles them with varying degrees of expertise. Then, side by side with these, he describes "psionic sensors", auditory hallucinations, pain, and alternate realities. Whatever else may be true, it's a rare autistic person today who will admit to hearing hallucinatory voices. These chapters basically discuss personal aspects of autism as well as what professionals should be doing in terms of autistic people, and contain some good advice, some bad, most mediocre.
About the last third of the book is poetry and lyrics by the author. I've never heard the music, so I don't know if I'm qualified to evaluate the lyrics.
Throughout the whole book, there's a sense of innocence bordering on (and sometimes crossing over well into) gullibility that endears other people in the book but grates a bit on me, at least while watching the use that parents and professionals put it to. I got the sense that, at the time of writing the book, the author's sense of self-worth had been hammered flat by the world he'd lived in most of his life, and reacted to even the faintest glimmer of approval or validation with puppylike gratitude. I can remember a time when I reacted like that -- thankfully I wrote things much more erasable than books back then, or I'd be in trouble -- and hope that he's moved on by now. Because a lot of the book reads like "How professionals can make use of an autistic person with no self-esteem in a few easy steps."
I want to like this book more than I did, but that uneasy sense of the author having been used without being aware of it yet, and the parallels with similar times in my own life, creep into any attempt to like it very much. It should be read with that unsettling dynamic firmly and consciously in the reader's mind.
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Title: Nobody Nowhere..autistic by D Williams ISBN: 0380722178 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Somebody Somewhere : Breaking Free from the World of Autism by Donna Williams ISBN: 0812925246 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 04 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Thinking In Pictures : and Other Reports from My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin ISBN: 0679772898 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: There's a Boy in Here by Judy Barron, Sean Barron ISBN: 1885477864 Publisher: Future Horizons Pub. Date: 08 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Emergence:Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin ISBN: 0446671827 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.99 |
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