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A review by bailey_the_bookworm
What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love—with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Sarah Nannery, Larry Nannery
informative
slow-paced
2.5
Petty stuff first: Cache and cachet mean different things (“social cache” is not a thing; “social cachet” is). Discrete and discreet also mean different things. There are so many small but distracting errors like this throughout the book, along with the weird formatting of every recreated text/IM exchange.
On a more serious level, the first big red flag for me was when the author wrote “I have Asperger’s” in a book published in 2021. No, you don’t. Hans Asperger was a Nazi, and that diagnostic term was removed from the DSM in 2013. To still claim the label eight years later means you’re either dangerously out of touch or have a lot of internalized ableism (or both!).
And that leads into my next major issue: the use of person-first language, but just for autistic people. It’s always “people with autism,” “people who have autism,” etc.—but simultaneously “neurotypical people.” Allistics get the identity-first language, but autistic people don’t? Autism isn’t an appendage (or a disease). I don’t have autism, I am autistic. Using person-first language is a choice, but it’s incredibly cringe, especially when everyone else gets identity-first description.
Finally, the actual advice. Look, I get that this is a book about communication tips for surviving in a neurotypical world, but my god. Every chapter is like “Here’s how to contort yourself to meet neurotypical expectations while getting almost no understanding or accommodation in return, except maybe sometimes from your partner.” It all sounds so incredibly cognitively demanding—how are you spending all that time doing so much planning and scripting and also…functioning? Not burning out on the reg? Why is so much of the advice about serving neurotypical communication styles and not about how to meet in the middle or get autistic communication needs met?
The focus on corporate communication is also going to be all but useless for large numbers of autistic people, many of whom aren’t employed full-time in office settings. It’s useful in its way, but some acknowledgement of the reality of employment for autistic folk would have been…nice.
There is some genuinely useful stuff here, but you have to wade through so much garbage to get there.
On a more serious level, the first big red flag for me was when the author wrote “I have Asperger’s” in a book published in 2021. No, you don’t. Hans Asperger was a Nazi, and that diagnostic term was removed from the DSM in 2013. To still claim the label eight years later means you’re either dangerously out of touch or have a lot of internalized ableism (or both!).
And that leads into my next major issue: the use of person-first language, but just for autistic people. It’s always “people with autism,” “people who have autism,” etc.—but simultaneously “neurotypical people.” Allistics get the identity-first language, but autistic people don’t? Autism isn’t an appendage (or a disease). I don’t have autism, I am autistic. Using person-first language is a choice, but it’s incredibly cringe, especially when everyone else gets identity-first description.
Finally, the actual advice. Look, I get that this is a book about communication tips for surviving in a neurotypical world, but my god. Every chapter is like “Here’s how to contort yourself to meet neurotypical expectations while getting almost no understanding or accommodation in return, except maybe sometimes from your partner.” It all sounds so incredibly cognitively demanding—how are you spending all that time doing so much planning and scripting and also…functioning? Not burning out on the reg? Why is so much of the advice about serving neurotypical communication styles and not about how to meet in the middle or get autistic communication needs met?
The focus on corporate communication is also going to be all but useless for large numbers of autistic people, many of whom aren’t employed full-time in office settings. It’s useful in its way, but some acknowledgement of the reality of employment for autistic folk would have been…nice.
There is some genuinely useful stuff here, but you have to wade through so much garbage to get there.