call me jaded Report post Posted January 5, 2006 From the Independent Rising stars of 2006: Books By Boyd Tonkin Published: 31 December 2005 Kamran Nazeer In the future, bemused historians will look back on the affluent parts of the early-21st-century world and wonder why autism - its definitions, its causes, its impact on children and families - became such a key worry of the time. They may decide that all the clinical and policy debates masked a wider anxiety about what it meant to be a full individual, and part of a family and community, in a society of new opportunities and new dangers alike. And one book that will help them (and you) understand our age of autism is Kamran Nazeer's Send in the Idiots, due from Bloomsbury in March. Diagnosed as autistic at four, the boy from an itinerant Pakistani family (who was born in 1978) entered a state-of-the art specialist school in New York. His book looks back on the childhood and later lives of his fellow-pupils, and teases out the larger questions that lie behind all the wrangles over diagnosis, treatment and education. This remarkable piece of true-life storytelling takes as its theme not disability, but humanity. Nazeer himself now works as a policy adviser in Whitehall. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
barefoot wend Report post Posted March 10, 2006 Haven't finished but am enjoying 'Send in the Idiots by Kamran Nazeer. He's a policy adviser in Whitehall with asd. In 1982, when he was 4, he was at a small school for autism in NY. Twenty-three years later, he decides to find out what happened to the other children in his class and goes to stay with five of them - real mixed bag. Very interesting. Sometimes sad, sometimes heart-warming. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sue1957 Report post Posted March 11, 2006 There was an excerpt in one of the weekend newspaper supplements a couple of weeks ago (I remember I was in bed with a cold, and its the first time I've read a paper in months). It was the story of one of the girls in the class, but it was a really sad story, have hummed and ha'd since whether to get the book. Thanks for the review so far, will probably get it now. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Brook Report post Posted March 11, 2006 Thanks barefoot wend, I think this will be the next book for my ever growing home library. Found this interview, it sounds like a really good read. http://www.bloomsbury.com/ezine/Articles/A...485&Quiz%5Fid=0 Brook Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CarerQuie Report post Posted March 12, 2006 It does look interesting.xx Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Brook Report post Posted March 12, 2006 Have just ordered it from my bookshop. Brook Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Brook Report post Posted April 13, 2006 (edited) Well, I've just finished reading this book, and although I thought it was pretty good, I couldn't help feeling uneasy about some of the things his previous teachers say toward the end of the book. I wont say 'what' as I dont want to spoil it for anyone who is reading it, but it kinda ruined it for me. Still a good read though. Brook Edited April 13, 2006 by Brook Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
call me jaded Report post Posted April 29, 2006 This is definitely going on my reading list! Autism Revisited By Carolyn See for the Washington Post "Send In The Idiots" Stories From the Other Side of Autism By Kamran Nazeer Bloomsbury. 230 pp. $23.95 Kamran Nazeer sets the tone of this touching book in an ingenious, seemingly offhand introduction. The place is a private nursery school on Manhattan's Upper West Side; the time is the early 1980s. Nazeer is one of a dozen kids there who have been diagnosed with the then-rare syndrome of autism. But from the author's point of view, almost every human being has one limitation or another: The teacher, Ms. Russell, has such troubles with depth perception that she can scarcely get dressed in the morning. It's not until the middle of the day that she feels up to reading a newspaper out loud to the class. But one little boy, Craig, has echolalia, "the constant, disconnected use of a particular word or phrase," in this case, "Send in the idiots." Thus, Ms. Russell would read, "Gridlock continues between the White House and Congress," and Craig would chime in, "Send in the idiots." How far off, the author hints, was Craig's repetitive chant? Idiots abound. Physical and mental limitations are always with us. It's not just people with autism who are off the mark. We're all off the mark, one way or another. Flash-forward a little more than 20 years. Kamran Nazeer has become what we call "high functioning." He's studied some law, completed his PhD thesis, worked as a British civil servant and written for several publications. Then he gets the idea of revisiting some of the classmates he knew as a preschooler. A "typical" kid would have a difficult, if not impossible, time finding them or even remembering their names, but parents of kids with autism form close bonds. His mom and dad have kept in touch with the other parents over the years. So Nazeer sets out to visit four of his old classmates. How did they turn out? The answer may offer some clues to a larger question: What's going to happen to this massive generation of children who have been part of the current, much-dreaded epidemic of this mental disorder? Currently, as many as one in every 166 children born in the United States will develop autism. "Whirling . . . running to and fro; bouncing; walking on toes and in other peculiar ways; banging or rolling heads; mouthing and licking things; grinding teeth; blinking; moving fingers as if double-jointed" and being unwilling or unable to talk -- these are some of the symptoms that affect these children. And at this point, we have little information in print about what it all means, only anguished accounts by mothers about what may or may not work in terms of child care, or academic speculation by "experts" who -- no matter how distinguished they may be -- still haven't found a cause, a cure or a guaranteed successful treatment. Books by Temple Grandin, a woman with autism who grew up to fashion a new kind of chute for cattle, offer little real insight into the condition. And the mercury-in-our-vaccines argument offers more heat than light on the subject. Forget all that for now. The question for Nazeer and for his schoolmates is whether they can live in the world without catastrophe. Certainly Nazeer is well and competent enough to go researching. He looks up four autistic kids he went to school with: Craig, the little boy who first asked Ms. Russell to send in those idiots; Andre, who is beset by bouts of violence; Randall, who is being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous lover; and Elizabeth, who has killed herself by the time Nazeer catches up with her family. Andre, the one with the temper, lives with his sister now, but he's done time in a juvenile facility for inadvertently almost killing somebody. He's constructed a set of puppets and speaks mostly through them. When Nazeer interrupts a puppet, he finds himself locked in the bathroom. Andre works in computers, his sister loves him, and they have friends to hang out with. If he learns to control his temper, he'll survive. Randall is a different story. He works as a courier in downtown Chicago and is in a relationship with someone who appears to be a loving, faithful gay man. This man, Mike, is Randall's buffer against the outside world: He makes the phone calls and explains to Randall when he is being taken advantage of. But it turns out that he's doing a little taking advantage himself -- fooling around, and assuming that because Randall is autistic, he won't notice. To read this chapter is to burn with rage. Elizabeth, despite her parents' very best efforts, couldn't stand either the complexities of the larger world or the constant, always unexpected taunts of strangers. Her "vocalizing" in public, for instance, made her prey to people who couldn't resist making fun of her. When clinical depression was added to her autism, she ended her own suffering. With Craig, Nazeer finds the closest thing he can expect to a real friend. Although both are moderately autistic, they have plenty to talk about, and so they devise rules for conversation: taking turns, rolling paper clips in their pockets or holding on to other talismans for self-confidence. Together, they seem happy -- even proud -- to be alive. They have gotten better, whatever that means. "Our autism eased," he writes, "in each case, because of other people, our parents, friends, and our teachers, of course." Of course, there are those whose autism doesn't ease. What will become of them (or their caretakers), we can't know. But these words, written by a precocious, even slightly know-it-all author, may in themselves ease the agony of parents and grandparents who have seen their children inexplicably skid away into a place where they seem untouchable, locked into an inscrutable world of their own. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kathryn Report post Posted August 31, 2006 This book was my holiday read and I can thoroughly recommend it - couldn't put it down. The author does several things very well - it's a objective account of how a group of autistic children have matured into adulthood, and a highly personal account of his own experiences and reactions as one by one he traces them and their families, and lives alongside them for a while. He also meets up wth two of his former teachers. Along the way he describes and analyses the characteristics of autism in general, but also demonstrates that autistic individuals are very different from each other. It doesn't assume any prior knowledge of autism - so I think it's a good one to recommend to family and friends who want to understand some of the issues better. I think it's very intelligently and eloquently written, thought provoking, at times funny, but also very disturbing (one of the four committed suicide ). I think he illustrates so clearly the positives and negatives of being an autistic adult in an NT world. The author himself is autistic - some reviews suggest that the author "got better", but he himself doesn't say this. Do give this book a go, if you have the time to put your feet up and read when everyone is back at school. K x By the way, I've merged the two separate topics discussing this book. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites