How to Be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe

Punctuated by their poetry, this is an exuberant, inspiring, life-changing insight into autism from a viewpoint almost entirely missing from public discussion. Poe writes about her memoir: ‘The best way to describe it is to imagine a road trip. There will be parts that make you want to cover your eyes, but I beg you to read on, because if I can change just one person’s perceptions, if I can help one person with autism feel like they’re less alone, then this will all be worth it.’ How To Be Autistic charts Charlotte Amelia Poe’s journey through schooldays and young adulthood, with chapters on food, fandom, depression, body piercing, comic conventions, and technology. My story is about survival, fear and, finally, hope.

‘I wanted to show the side of autism that you don’t find in books and on Facebook. They witness their own behaviour with a wry humour as they sympathise with those who care for them, yet all the while challenging the neurotypical narratives of autism as something to be ‘fixed’. They address their reader in a voice that is direct, sharply clever and ironic. For Charlotte, autism is a fundamental aspect of their identity and art.

From food and fandom, to body modification and comic conventions, Charlotte’s experiences through the torments of schooldays and young adulthood leave us with a riot of conflicting emotions: horror, empathy, despair, laugh-out-loud amusement and, most of all, respect. Poe’s voice is confident, moving and often funny, as they reveal to us a very personal account of autism, mental illness, gender and sexual identity.Īs we follow Charlotte’s journey through school and college, we become as awestruck by their extraordinary passion for life as by the enormous privations that they must undergo to live it.

How to Be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe