Nobody Nowhere: The Remarkable Autobiography of an Autistic Girl - Hardcover

Williams, Donna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385402988 ISBN 13: 9780385402989

Publisher: Doubleday, 1992

Synopsis

Labelled abnormal, nut, retard, spastic, mental, disturbed, moron, crazy, weird, wild and insane, Donna Williams lived in a world of her own. Alternating between rigid hostility and oblivious extroversion, she waged a war against the world. At the age of 25, Donna discovered a word, a new label, which brought with it a handful of answers, a chance for forgiveness of both herself and others around her and hope for a sense of belonging: that word was autism. This book provides a personal account of Donna's struggle to come to terms with her condition and to survive the suffering enforced by an unsympathetic, ignorant world. The book shows an insight into the workings of an autistic mind, outlining the incomprehensible pain and tortuous inner turmoil that is a result of the condition.

About this title

Review

Nobody Nowhere tears aside the veil that conceals the mind of the autistic person. Donna Williams' account has the magnetic and unrivalled power of authenticity... this book is absorbing, disturbing, enriching and it will cause many to substantially revise their views of what it is that constitutes psychological normality. (Professor Anthony Clare)

This was an interesting account of Donna's life and how she dealt with the outside world and intertwined her three personalities to cope. I feel this is a worthwhile read for any parent or relative of an autistic person. Teachers and psychologists as well as therapists would better understand how an autistic person sees themselves. (BellaOnline Reviews)

Donna Williams isn't just teaching us what it is like to be autistic, she is teaching us what it is like to be human. (The New York Times Book Review)

It really is an amazing, engaging autobiography of a fascinating individual. Whether you are familiar with autism first-hand or not, you will have a difficult time putting this book down, I can assure you. (Autism Café.)

From the Author

What Donna says about writing Autobiography
Why write about oneself?
Everyone has a different reason.

I wrote the first of my four autobiographical works, Nobody Nowhere, on the verge of suicide after a wild half-crazy life with abuse, homelessness and ultimately hope for belonging only to find I was terrified of real closeness. I had a last inkling of hope that I couldn't truly say I'd tried my hardest to cope if I'd never fully disclosed the nature of my own private world. So I wrote out everything that mattered in my feelings and decided to give it to one child psychiatrist in the hope they could tell me what kind of mad I was and whether there was hope for answers and belonging. My intention was to then shred it, burn it and leave this world. Instead it was passed on to his colleague, then from her to her publisher, from him to an agent and from there out into the world it became a number one international bestseller. But why write three more?

My second autobiography, Somebody Somewhere is so completely different to the first and exposed a world of such different, forgotten citizens of the world, that the story had to be told, to give a voice to the voiceless, to be a starting point for solidarity and building bridges. It too became a number one international bestseller.

The third work, Like Color to The Blind exposed three very controversial areas that I felt strongly about; the visual fragmentation of visual perceptual disorders, the importance of augmented and alternative communication systems for voiceless people and the search for selfhood buried underneath stored learning, something so many people struggle with in silence until its often too late.

The fourth book, Everyday Heaven was about the simultaneous discovery of sexuality, journeys in orientation and at the same time coping with loss in a two year span in which I lost three of the closest people in my life.

So I wrote each for very different reasons, to hope and to survive, to shout and to stay sane.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385402988
• ISBN 13: 9780385402989
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224