"Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate" is a much-needed book.
Kim's writing addresses a population of adults with Asperger's who have not, thus far, had an articulate voice in Asperger's literature: "good girls" (and "good boys") who quietly make it to adulthood without being diagnosed. Those who have struggled through school and work, taking their challenges upon themselves, and succeeded enough to pass as intelligent people not quite working to their potential, will find this a particularly welcome text. The same traits that keep these "quiet kids" under the radar as children continue to create difficulties into adulthood, and Kim is a knowledgeable and sympathetic guide for this experience.
As it now stands, popular Asperger's literature can be foreign terrain for those in whom intelligence and disability coexist with a overcharged sense of responsibility. The warranted success of memoirists like John Elder Robison and Jeannie Davide-Rivera (alongside more sober but extremely gifted advocates such as Temple Grandin) is creditable to their ability to tell evocative, energetic stories about themselves. While all of these authors are strong narrators, theirs are stories that only a small minority with Asperger's can recognize themselves in. If Temple Grandin's exceptional mind makes her a fascinating person and a patient and talented teacher in the neurology of autism, her personal experience is difficult to identify with unless you are yourself a savant. Robison and Davide-Rivera, conversely, present life with Asperger's as a sort of heedless tear through childhood and adolescence, full of risk-seeking behavior and impulsive experience, followed by a long denouement (after diagnosis) in which those adventures are retold and sifted for clues. Plenty of adults with Asperger's do find kinship with the latter authors' sense of "otherness." Those with a risk-averse experience of autism, however, can start to feel unwelcome in the popular narrative.
Kim's contribution to Asperger's memoir literature is not so much a biography for the "rest of us," however, as it is an adventure memoir of interiority. Both "squeaky wheels" and quiet observers will recognize their own challenges in this book, especially where Kim turns from personal anecdote to practical suggestions for maintaining relationships in adulthood. Her investigations of executive function impairments, control, and shame are some of the best written in any work on Asperger's.
Kim's book, however, is specifically an account of a life spent trying, prior to diagnosis, to observe and mold herself into the right kind of character for every situation and every person, accumulating rules and reactions that felt inauthentic to her own personality. Beyond the challenges of social life and expectations, she describes a permanent well of deep, personal contentment and capacity for wonder.
This emphasis on interiority is what makes Kim's book unique and necessary. Kim captures the richness of adaptation as much as its frustrations. Her descriptions of the elation and the intense, pure joy that she believes is unique to those with autism, for example, is a piece of psychological art few have approached in their Asperger's-centered biographies. Moreover, she treats this hard-won practice of adaptation as a finely-honed discipline, and one that can act as an unexpected reserve of strength when the desire to "make up for lost time" and reclaim years of lost potential is constructively acted on after diagnosis.
Though Kim's book addresses gender very sparingly, its place in the current literature makes this an especially beneficial guide for women on the spectrum.
To oversimplify the current portrayals of women in Asperger's writing, they tend towards two divergent descriptions. On one end is the impulsive, free-spirited, otherworldly Asperger's woman. Davide-Rivera's pride in her tendency to act without consideration of consequences as a young girl falls into this camp, as does Simone's argument that women with Asperger's have near-paranormal talents.
On the other end, there is the controlling-unto-normalcy Asperger's woman, whose herculean self-restraint in adolescence makes her Asperger's symptoms nearly impossible to detect by early adulthood. The well-intentioned argument by Tony Attwood that a young person with Asperger's will ideally move from the home of a "secretary-mother" (who compensates for the executive shortfalls of the Asperger's child), to the home of the "secretary-wife" (who compensates for the executive shortfalls of the Asperger's man) illustrates the latter description well. Both settle for describing coping mechanisms and adopted social identities, without considering the possibilty of a self-aware, self-accepting adult.
Attwood's developmental leap mirrors persistent errors of omission in the wider popular writing on adults with Asperger's. These errors assume that single adults with Asperger's are fated to remain dependent on their parents or caretakers; that men with Asperger's do not (and maybe should not) pursue relationships with men or women with Asperger's; and perhaps most disheartening, that women with Asperger's- unlike men- are on their own after adolescence.
These lacunae cannot be amended in one volume, but Kim has addressed their common theme of dependence in a strong first entry to what will hopefully become a broader genre for adults newly-diagnosed with Asperger's. That is, experience-based guidance for living a relatively "normal" life, constructively seeking out neurological and practical adaptations, and-most importantly- acknowledging the centrality of strong relationships.
Kim anchors her narrative in her relationship with her husband, which not only provides insight into her own story, but acts as a means for portraying lifelong challenges into adulthood. "Maybe you need a minder," Kim writes of herself in the last chapter. "I have one! The problem is, I'm married to him. How uncool-- not to mention unromantic and unsexy and unequal-partnershipy is it when my husband needs to remind me to do all these little things?"
This is an inner struggle, not to mention a source of shame, that many of Kim's readers in relationships will find familiar. Its resolution, within her relationship, is as valuable as her courage in posing it: "I... asked him if he doesn't get tired... He laughed and said, 'Of course, but what am I going to do? We chose each other.'" The ability to communicate this kind of concrete, interpersonal sense of worthiness, with an eye towards fully growing into oneself, is what makes Kim, as much as Grandin and Robison, an exceptional memoirist.
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