Aspergers in Literature
Aspergers in Literature
To my personal surprise there is very little Aspergers representation in literature. You may mention popular books featuring an Aspergers character as the protagonist such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
It's true that it gives some insight into the mind of an Aspergers character, but the example person that it gives is somewhat of a stereotype for us autistic people. The protagonist serves as an unreliable narrator who's thrown into a nuanced character drama without any understanding of the way people interact. He has difficulty understanding emotion and expressing it in a manageable way. On many occasions he doesn't have much understanding of empathy or sadness. He's also remarkably intelligent in the novel showing skill in math and science. He is the perfect example of the human robot stereotype for Aspergers people. Though these things are things which Aspergers people struggle with this story is definitely a very narrow look into the world of Aspergers.
So maybe an Aspergers writer would give people a better understanding of the world of Aspergers. The problem is that there are surprisingly few Asperger writers out there. Of course there are some sources that claim that Orwell, Twain, and H.G Wells were all aspies. I strongly disagree. I feel like it's becoming quite common now to place any awkward genius into the group of Aspergers, but that's a separate problem.
The truth is that there are very few writers detailing how it's like to live life with Aspergers in a significant novel. We have looks into the way many minorities interact with different cultures which is good, but there is no literature detailing how we act in a neurotypical environment that is written by us. I discovered this recently when looking into aspie writers and they are surprisingly few.
Aspergers often corresponds with increased artistic and intellectual ability, so it should have no shortage of writers. Which leads to something that I consider a problem. The expectations of an Aspergers person. It's true that we're generally good at more left brained things like math and science, but that doesn't stop us from delving into the world of the abstract. We just do it in a different way than neurotypical people do. There is a disappointing shortage of aspie writers, and I hope that in the future us aspies will have diversified into writing.
It's true that it gives some insight into the mind of an Aspergers character, but the example person that it gives is somewhat of a stereotype for us autistic people. The protagonist serves as an unreliable narrator who's thrown into a nuanced character drama without any understanding of the way people interact. He has difficulty understanding emotion and expressing it in a manageable way. On many occasions he doesn't have much understanding of empathy or sadness. He's also remarkably intelligent in the novel showing skill in math and science. He is the perfect example of the human robot stereotype for Aspergers people. Though these things are things which Aspergers people struggle with this story is definitely a very narrow look into the world of Aspergers.
So maybe an Aspergers writer would give people a better understanding of the world of Aspergers. The problem is that there are surprisingly few Asperger writers out there. Of course there are some sources that claim that Orwell, Twain, and H.G Wells were all aspies. I strongly disagree. I feel like it's becoming quite common now to place any awkward genius into the group of Aspergers, but that's a separate problem.
The truth is that there are very few writers detailing how it's like to live life with Aspergers in a significant novel. We have looks into the way many minorities interact with different cultures which is good, but there is no literature detailing how we act in a neurotypical environment that is written by us. I discovered this recently when looking into aspie writers and they are surprisingly few.
Aspergers often corresponds with increased artistic and intellectual ability, so it should have no shortage of writers. Which leads to something that I consider a problem. The expectations of an Aspergers person. It's true that we're generally good at more left brained things like math and science, but that doesn't stop us from delving into the world of the abstract. We just do it in a different way than neurotypical people do. There is a disappointing shortage of aspie writers, and I hope that in the future us aspies will have diversified into writing.
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