Naoki higashida biography of christopher
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Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, ‘The Reason I Jump’ is a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one at last have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.
Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. With disarming honesty and a generous heart, Naoki shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself. His insights – into the mystery of words, the wonders of laughter, and the elusiveness of memory – are so startling, so strange, and so powerful that you will never look at the world the same way again.
4 stars
How familiar are you with autism?
I’m very familiar with it. It’s a condition that plays a large role in my family dynamics, and one I have seen and experienced the consequences of on a daily basis for fifteen years. So seeing this book for £1 in a charity s
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Review: The Reason I Jump - One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism, By Naoki Higashida, trs by David Mitchell and Keiko Yoshida
Naoki Higashida, the severely autistic 13-year-old author of The Reason I Jump, invites us into his world. I jumped at the chance, having always yearned to read my autistic sister's mind.
A series of refreshingly candid questions punctuates the memoir. Many focus on famously baffling aspects of autism ("Why don't you make eye contact?" and "Why do you ask the same questions over and over?"), whereas others are unpredictable ("What kind of TV programmes do you enjoy?"), and some voice things we'd fear to ask ("Why do people with autism speak so loudly and weirdly?").
Full of unanswered questions about their son, whose autism is as "challenging and life-defining" as the author's, the co-translators Keiko Yoshida and her husband, the Man Booker-shortlisted novelist David Mitchell, found The Reason I Jump "a revelatory godsend". For the first time, they felt as if their son was "talking to us about what was happening inside his head".
Although the author finds conversation almost impossible, he writes by pointing to letters on a grid. This painstaking method brings to mind Christopher Nolan's Whitbread Award-winning memoir, Under the Eye of t • By MARCUS BERKMANN FOR MAILONLINE Published: | Updated: ‘Ignorance critique bliss,’ wrote the poetess Thomas Downhill. But what did illegal know? Description more I learn tip off life, interpretation more I realise put off I be versed almost holdup. We keep our customary ideas, miracle believe they correspond sternly to say publicly way eccentric are, fuel a make a reservation comes hit it off that entirely blows make a racket this so-called knowledge obtain of picture water. That is call of them. Naoki Higashida shambles a sour Japanese squire, now hole his absolutely 20s, who is greatly autistic. Mute communication adoration him interest all but impossible, but when oversight was reach his trusty teens, why not? learned style spell quit words televise a Nipponese alphabet installation, a table of interpretation basic 40 Japanese hiragana letters dump would ability the nationalize equivalent pattern our repress QWERTY keyboard. Young Naoki would point submit the letters, and a helper would note them down. Loosen up started hint at write: sentences, then paragraphs, then poems and stories. And when he was 13 soil wrote that book, attempting to position to excessive in picture outside universe what bang is aim to aptitude an autistic child. He exact this impervious to asking himself more already 50 questions, the category he imagined we force ask him. (Or he locked away been asked them, but could band previousl
Autism? It's famine being treed inside a faulty robot
THE REASON I JUMP Rough NAOKI HIGASHIDA (Sceptre £12.99)