03/19/2025
In my first reading roundup I talk about a wonderful Sci-Fi series and three incredible memoirs. All of the books covered are written by autistic authors. The memoirs detail the lived experience of three amazing late-diagnosed autistic women. And the Sci-Fi series features an autistic protagonist central to the adventure. Just as interesting, in my opinion, the theme of finding our true autistic calling is central to each of these books. All of the books featured are available in ebook. They are:
Xandri Corelel Series (affiliate link) by Kaia Sønderby : 0. Testing Pandora, 1. Failure to Communicate, 2. Tone of Voice
Drama Queen (affiliate link) by Sara Gibbs
Label Me (affiliate link) by Francesca Baird
U Don't Seem Autistic (affiliate link) by Kathleen Schubert
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Episode Transcript
0:00
This is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV and today we're going to be talking about four books by autistic authors. Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi, this is Barbara Graver.
0:29
I'm so happy you could join me for my very first autistic POV reading roundup. So we're going to be talking about four different books, actually one series and three memoirs. And the reason I chose these books is because they all kind of center on a common theme. And
0:48
this is the theme I want to explore probably in our next episode, but I'm going to talk about the books in this one. The first one is a sci-fi series, and this series is written by Kaya Sounderby, and it's the Zandri Corello series. series, and it begins with a fantastic book called Failure to Communicate.
1:13
The second book I'm going to be talking about is Drama Queen, written by Sarah Gibbs, and this is an amazing memoir. It's my favorite autistic memoir I have read to date. It's fantastic. And then I'm going to talk about two other memoirs a little more briefly, primarily because they go along with the same theme,
1:32
and one is called You Don't Look Autistic, and you in this is spelled with a u, Actually, You Don't Seem Autistic is the name. And the last one is Label Me. So we're going to talk about all these books. And I'm going to try to explain why I like them and why I think they're,
1:50
they're all have a lot of value. And I do want to say with memoir, like I've heard people say, there's so many autism memoirs out there and that's true. There are, but I feel like all of them have value. Like every autistic memoir I read,
2:07
I resonate with or pick up on something different and I find them all helpful. They're helpful on multiple levels. I think they're helpful in terms of making you feel a little less alone. They're helpful in giving you insight. And they're helpful in terms of learning and support. I think they serve multiple purposes. And these books,
2:29
all of these books, and I just want you to kind of keep in mind as we talk about them, all deal with the importance of our calling. So the first series I wanted to talk about, the first book I want to talk about is the Zandri Corello series. And this is a sci-fi series.
2:49
It's set in just an amazing world. It's just a wonderful world. And the characters are great. And one of the things I loved about the world was the diversity of the world. And it shows... quote alien species as not all humanoids not they're not all guys in suits and i
3:08
understand why i i watch a lot of sci-fi and i read sci-fi and i like sci-fi and i understand why say star trek like all the quote aliens had to be able to be an actor in a suit and understand why the humanoid ideal is always or often represented in sci-fi,
3:29
and that every species encountered is a variation on the human ideal. But I really like the fact that this author, that Kara Sounderby, treated the various races throughout the galaxy as being capable of evolving from different types of life forms, different species. So there might be a species that's like dolphins.
3:56
There might be one that's very like various kinds of mammals. There might be others that are humanoid. And I thought this was a really cool way to present this. And the book was really, really well constructed. It was plotted out very well. It was suspenseful. The characters were engaging. The main character, Zandri, is autistic.
4:18
And I thought the author did a really good job of that, of portraying the challenges and the strengths of autism really well. And she is the heroine of the series. She's not a peripheral character. She's the heroine. And she has unique abilities to communicate, which seems kind of ironic, but really the way it's presented in the series,
4:41
it isn't, to communicate with different types of cultures and different languages and different kinds of people throughout the galaxy because of how she'd had to learn to do that as an autistic. And it's really well done. It's really suspenseful. It's a really great series that has three books. There's a kind of a prequel called Testing Pandora.
5:06
Then there's Failure to Communicate. And then there's Tone of Voice. That's book two. Testing Pandora is book zero. Failure to Communicate is book one. And Tona Voices book two, and I hope she writes book three, I really do. And I really liked the theme of this, of the autistic protagonist struggling, struggling with people, struggling with her past,
5:30
struggling with all kinds of things. But also finding her niche. She finds her niche in this. She finds her calling. And that's kind of a theme with all these books. And I think it's an important theme. And the second book I wanted to talk about is a memoir by Sarah Gibbs.
5:45
And that is called Drama Queen because that was something she was told all her life, that she was being dramatic. And that's a very common theme. charge, I think, that's leveled at autistics. It may come in various kind of deliveries, but it's a common thing that's said. And she focuses a lot, she focuses obviously on her childhood,
6:08
everyone talks about their childhood in these memoirs, but she also focuses a lot on her work life. And she does an excellent job of showing how she didn't fit in in the standard office 9 to 5 and why. And how other people treated her and how unfairly she was treated and what a double
6:28
standard really there was for people who were neurotypical and people who were autistic in general. And she was diagnosed relatively late in life, and I identified with a lot of what she said. Now, not everything. I never identify with everything people say in these memoirs, and I don't really think you should.
6:47
But I did identify with the fact that she was always making these fresh starts, and that was something I did really all my life. So she would just get overwhelmed and she would walk away from things like jobs and make a fresh start. And she was always making a fresh start. And I used to do that too.
7:07
I actually, I think between the ages of maybe 17 and 20, I didn't live anywhere. And by anywhere, I mean different states, different cities for more than six months. I just kept leaving and making these fresh starts that always failed. And she has the same mentality. She's like another fresh start.
7:30
And so I really, really identified with that. And another thing she talked about that I found really insightful is obsessiveness. And for her, a lot of her obsessions had to do with relationships. She would get very, very obsessed with either someone she was in a relationship with or someone she just had a crush on.
7:50
She even called it her crush monster. An interesting thing is she talked about how once she found out she was autistic, that kind of went away. And the reason it went away was because she understood that she was looking for something. She was looking for an answer in these partners, in these romantic partners.
8:13
She was trying to find an answer. she found that she was autistic. She had an answer for why life was so difficult for her, and she didn't need to do that anymore. And I thought that was brilliant. And I've kind of experienced that too. And I'll talk a little bit more about it.
8:29
Maybe we'll do an episode on spirituality at some point. But for me, my answer was not so much relationships, although I did some of that, but spirituality. I was always looking for an answer in terms of either organized religion or different specific spiritual practice. And I went through so many religions and so many spiritual practices.
8:53
I was like the perennial seeker. And I would go kind of from one thing to another. And not just when I found out I was autistic, but when I started to really think about it and integrate it and understand it. and kind of gain some perspective because of it,
9:11
that need to be immersing myself in different spiritual practices just kind of evaporated. It was really, really surprising. It just isn't really there anymore. And when I read that in Sarah Gibbs's book, I thought her crush monster for me, it was like crushes on spirituality more. The same thing kind of happened to me.
9:32
And I thought that's really interesting. So I'm kind of curious if anyone else has had that experience. And the other thing I really appreciated in Sarah Gibbs' book and Drama Queen was that she needed to find out what it is she did. And it turned out to be writing comedy. And the book is just brilliantly funny.
9:54
And I think that's a testament to how much this was her calling. And I feel personally that people with autism are probably more focused on calling and career than a lot of neurotypical people. I think it's oftentimes very central to who we are. At least it's central to who I am.
10:16
And trying to find my calling has been something that has kind of haunted me all my life. And I was always very creative in terms of writing and art, and yet I couldn't ever really find where I belonged. So I find it interesting that in all of these books, the fiction and the memoir,
10:36
that was also a big theme. And Sarah Gibbs could not function in an office environment, no matter how hard she tried. And yet when she began to explore comedy, which is a really challenging thing to be a comedian or to write comedy, is very competitive, I'm sure, and very challenging. I'm sure the bar is set very high.
10:59
as is the case with a lot of creative things, but I think particularly comedy, that's a tough pick. It's a really tough pick. And yet that was where she excelled. And I found that very interesting. And it just did me good to read the story of somebody who struggled,
11:16
kind of like I struggled when I worked as a nurse in an office environment. I was never, never part of the in-group. The office politics were kind of always skewed against me. And I'll talk more about that, I think, in another episode. But it's so difficult. And like Sarah says, it's not about doing your job.
11:38
She always did her job very well. It was about the social aspect of fitting in in the office. And that was my experience, too. And I think a lot of us have that experience. So I just love to see that she, quote, made it.
11:52
I love to see that she became a comedy writer and that she wrote this amazing book. It's just a good thing. to, uh, to know. So I love that. And then the two other books I just can mention briefly were You Don't Look Autistic, and that's you with the letter U, and Label Me.
12:13
And these were both books written by autistic women. And I really especially liked Label Me because I The author of Label Me, her autism presented a little bit differently. Francesca Bard, I believe her name was, or Baird. Her autism presented quite differently, I think, than mine does, but yet I could identify with parts of it.
12:34
And one of the things that she did was she got very attached to places. And I have that a little bit. And I think there's so many ways that we try to develop a sense of identity. And I think this is one way that we often do is by getting very attached to place.
12:51
And so I thought that was interesting. And with You Don't Look Autistic, which I believe that's Kathleen Schubert, but I'll put it in the show notes. She talked a lot about masking. And I think too, in both of these books, you don't look autistic and label me finding their calling, finding their, their place,
13:14
their calling in life was very important. And for, for Kathleen, it was, she got into integrative medicine. And she actually had problems because she was interviewed by a very unfriendly, kind of skeptical journalist and made to look very bad in the media at one point. But she didn't give up.
13:37
And that's what I think is so amazing about all these stories. One of the things... that nobody's giving up nobody's giving up no matter how hard it is no matter how much they don't fit in no matter how hard it is to find their place and to realize
13:52
their calling and to be seen and to be true to themselves and kind to themselves and overcome their challenges they don't stop trying and I think that's huge I think that's really huge And eventually all of these people learned to stop masking. And I think in Label Me, Francesca found a different sort of a calling.
14:19
Like she didn't find necessarily a creative calling, other creative aspects of her job having to do with finance that she was very good at. But she found a place that felt safe to her because her place was important. She found a steady job in a place that felt safe.
14:34
And she was able to do well there because of that. So it's a question, I think, of honoring ourselves and valuing what is important to us that is kind of the underlying key to all this. So I just wanted to kind of do the reading roundup of these books. Again, this is the Xandri Carrello series,
14:59
Drama Queen by Sarah Gibbs, and You Don't Look Autistic and Label Me. And I think a common theme in all of these, which I find really interesting, is calling, finding our calling. I'll put links to all these books in the show notes. They're definitely, definitely worth reading.
15:15
And I would sort of like to continue for the rest of August. I'd like to continue... really with two topics that these books kind of suggested to me. And the first is autism and career versus calling that I'd like to talk about. And I'll mostly be sharing my experience on this.
15:35
And the other one I would like to talk about is writing a memoir, issues around writing a memoir, because that's something I'd like to do And as I said before, even though people say there are a lot of autism memoirs out there, I think there's always room for more because I read them all the time.
15:55
I love them. I think they're so helpful. Some are better than others, but they all teach me something because they're a human story, a story of another autistic person's struggle. So I want to encourage myself to write a memoir, and I want to encourage other people to write a memoir.
16:14
So these are going to be the other two episodes I'm going to do in the month of August. And that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed my first reading roundup. And I also hope that you'll consider following the show or subscribing or liking it or whatever you feel called to do.
16:33
And I will see you again soon. And our next episode will be discussing career versus calling from an autistic perspective. And until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV. And thank you so much for listening.
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