Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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I was so impressed by not only Limburg’s project for this book but the execution as well. This book was so well-conceived and so well-written, and just overall super genuine and thoughtful—I was kind of surprised to find that I actually have no notes for this one. 😆 Seriously, all six letters covered the main themes and topics associated with womanhood/femininity and neurodivergency/disability (esp. Autism) incredibly well and I thought Limburg’s treatment of the more sensitive subjects was extremely compassionate. Final note: I have Limburg’s poetry collection THE AUTISTIC ALICE on my TBR (& shelves) to read next!

Then there is the unique structure of the book. I thought at some point I would get used to the second-person letters to various "weird sisters" in history, but I never did. I think it ended up being an impersonal attempt at combining personal stories with those of the people Limburg wrote to. I imagine this book would have been a thousand times more compelling if it was a memoir of the author's experience as a late-diagnosed autistic Jewish mother. So much to dive into there, and this simply scratched the surface. Following a midlife Autism diagnosis, Limburg sets out to find “other women who had been misunderstood in their time.” LETTERS TO MY WEIRD SISTERS consists of six letters: to the Reader, to Virginia Woolf (whose problematic elements she does speak to very eloquently), to Adelheid Bloch (a victim of nazi eugenics and state-sanctioned murder), to Frau V (the mother of one of Hans Asperger’s male child patients), to Katharina Kepler (the socially outcast and isolated mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler who was tried as a witch in the early 1600s in Germany), and to Caron Freeborn (the late Autistic writer and close friend of Limburg). Oof. What a vital read. Limburg explores autism, parenting, feminism, disability rights and society’s relationship with difference through four letters to her “weird sisters” from history. Her letter to Frau V, the (possibly autistic) mother to Fritz, one of Hans Asperger’s autistic patients, reaches far into the culture of motherhood over the past decades and I found it very affecting. I was also grateful for the nuance she brought to the topic of “autism mothers” and felt both understood and rightly challenged by her words. We are, all of us, striving constantly to pass those normality exams, to take our raw and boundless selves and squash them into the forms of neater and nicer girls.” I am not autistic and harbour no suspicions that I may be, but I do not sit entirely comfortably within society’s notions of womanhood. I’ve always felt…well, a bit weird, and this book has also granted me some insight of more personal relevance that I will need to dwell on.Psychologists and psychiatrists sometimes like to argue that their language is value-neutral, but I don't believe that language which people use to describe other people could ever be.” The book ends with a foreword dedicated to the late writer and friend Caron Freeborn, and a rich bibliography for readers who want to know more about autism and neurodiversity. In Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism, Feminism and Motherhood, Joanne Limburg writes a series of letters to different women in history from Virginia Woolf to Katherina Kepler. In writing to these various weird women, Limburg is not saying that these women were necessarily autistic but looks at them through the lens of autism and how aspects such as their bluntness, non-conformity, and other aspects that relate to being "different" and autistic.

many of the moments when my autism had caused problems, or at least marked me out as different, were those moments when I had come up against some unspoken law about how a girl or a woman should be, and failed to meet it.” Limburg was 30 when she published her debut poetry collection, Femenismo, shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection in 2000. A second collection, Paraphernalia, followed in 2007. Although the cliched, Rain Man-fuelled perception of autism suggests that autistic people are only capable of excelling in maths and science, Limburg says: “Making art is not a remotely neurotypical thing to do! I’m not going to name names. But if you think about how certain very well-known music producers have been described as obsessive and eccentric and so on, with an ability to hear things other people can’t hear… well. What is that?” We exchange opinions on the possibility that various authors, pop stars and visual artists might be autistic. My other autistic female friends (most of whom have humanities degrees) play this speculation game on a regular basis. It’s a guilty secret. They are all, constantly, scanning the radar for pings from other weird sisters. But Limburg and I agree not to include the names of the artists we discussed in this article. “I wish this were the sort of thing one could say out loud,” shrugs Limburg. “But it isn’t. Because there is a stigma and people are seen as their own family’s property.”At times you want to close this book to protect its subject from your scrutiny. . . . She brings insight and a rueful wit to her story, which is interesting not only for her fellow walking wounded, but for writers and would-be writers."—Hilary Mantel, author, Wolf Hall, on The Women Who Thought Too Much Limburg is endearing, she writes with humour, and doesn’t shy away from her own experiences. I can’t wait to read more of her books. I think it's a wonderful read for anyone interested in disability and gender, regardless of whether they're autistic. Limburg is a talented writer and each letter was cleverly crafted. I really like the choice to frame each chapter as a letter to an individual. This worked for a variety of reasons, I think in the case of Woolf in particular that while she is not typically connected to the experiences of autism, it helped that it was a letter as it gave the sense of here are the ways that you and I connect. While I am sure it could have been done otherwise, I feel it helped to make clear that Limburg is not attempting to diagnose Woolf. It also served one of Limburg's concerns which was not to repeat what has historically been done to disabled people which is to talk about them, assuming their experiences without really engaging with the individual. This is particularly important for the second letter to Adelheid Bloch who was non-verbal.