Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism
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In this elegant and thought-provoking memoir, Dawn Prince-Hughes traces her personal growth from undiagnosed autism to the moment, as a young woman, when she entered the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle and became immediately fascinated with the gorillas. By observing them and, later, working with them, Prince-Hughes was finally able to emerge from her solitude and connect to living beings in a way she had never previously experienced.More than a story of autism, Songs of the Gorilla Nation is a poignant, beautifully written exploration of the rich landscape of human emotion and the ways we learn to love. The New York Times Autism is widely discussed these days. Much evidence suggests that the condition is on the rise, and nobody knows why or what to do about it. Asperger's has attracted particular interest because of its association with so-called geek culture: people with Asperger's are often highly intelligent, and they may focus intently, even obsessively, on one or a handful of subjects to the exclusion of everything else. This may sound like a useful attribute in a keyboard-driven economy, but Prince-Hughes does an excellent job of puncturing that idle thought balloon. Yes, she is extremely bright, and able to fixate on a subject with admirable concentration. But mostly what she conveys in her autobiography is naked desperation -- to calm down and loosen up, not to see a break in a routine as the beginning of the apocalypse, to trust that the lover who is angry at you now will not be angry at you forever. — Natalie Angier
