Unmasking for Life: The Autistic Person's Guide to Connecting, Loving, and Living Authentically
Devon Price's new book is out! This is how he describes it:
I wrote Unmasking for Life as a follow-up to Unmasking Autism that expands upon its core premises and explores the latest neurodiversity-informed research that has been published since the book came out. I was also inspired to write it by the numerous questions that readers have presented me over the last couple years.
This is a book about the stage of unmasking that comes after realizing that you are disabled, and begin having to worry about accommodating that disability in all facets of one’s life. Instead of only looking inward and focusing on getting to know one’s true, disabled self, the book encourages the reader to take steps in how they relate to others & structure their lives that will allow that self to more comfortably move throughout the world. In chapters devoted Friendship, Family, Work, Sex & Love, and Aging, I summarize some of the most common struggles that neurodivergent people face, explore the data on what challenges us and what supports we find beneficial, and present a variety of tools for people who are looking to unmask everything from their marriages and parenting practice to their bedrooms, how they spend their free time, how they think about their retirement years, and beyond.
I found it so rewarding to write this book — it felt like getting to continue a conversation that was started years ago, pick it right back up where we had left it last time, and carry it on late into the night. I’m so honored that I get to be a small part of the significant movement toward accepting neurodiversity that has permeated our culture in recent years, and that as I’ve been sorting out how to make my way in the world and accept who I am, that I’ve gotten to do so alongside so many other passionate, wise disabled people, too.
My work is nothing but a synthesis of the wisdom & advocacy that has been laid down by the countless other disabled people that came before me; anything in this book that you find useful, empowering, or intriguing is thanks to their blogs, research articles, conference presentations, emails, and random conversations with me. Having grown up with virtually no understanding of my own disability or how to go about finding other people like me, I’m still stunned at the wealth of resources that are available to all of us today. I only want to see us grow in our capacity to support one another and reimagine societal structures — and hopefully this book helps to encourage some of that."
It looks really interesting and informative. If people are interested, maybe we could do an online book club with Zooms and posts. Let me know in the comments, chat, or by email.