RARE AND BEAUTIFUL AS A PLUM TREE: A REVIEW OF ON THE SPECTRUM: AUTISM, FAITH, AND THE GIFTS OF NEURODIVERSITY
Book Cover. Public domain.
In the prelude to On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith & the Gifts of Neurodiversity, Daniel Bowman Jr. tells the story of a single plum tree that grew on his grandparents’ property in upstate New York. While not absurdly rare, it was certainly unexpected, and its fragility was enough to make it seem a bit out of place in such a cold and blue-collar region. He adopts this plum tree as a sort of personal symbol – an emblem of what it is like to be autistic in a world that does not expect and is often unprepared for autism. It is clearly out of place in a sense, in some ways seemingly alien to the world around, yet still beautiful, still valuable, still important in ways beyond words.
There are many ways of knowing autism. Regrettably, despite its increasing prevalence in the world, many know autism as a series of shorthand notes, a set of bullet points: Lacks empathy, or has a hard time interacting socially, or lacks control over emotions. Many others only know autistics as a single character (or, maybe more accurately, caricature): Rain Man, perhaps, or The Good Doctor. That these ideas and portrayals are largely wrong does not prevent people from having them as their only schema for understanding what autism is.
On the Spectrum is one small attempt to change that, in what might just be the only way that matters: in memoir form, by showing Bowman Jr.’s deep humanity, both his struggles and his strengths; by laying his soul bare. In doing so, he shows these reductive and harmful stereotypes of autism to be false, for anyone willing to listen. It offers a glimpse, or maybe more accurately, a series of glimpses, into not what autism is characterized by as a series of items on a list, but as a lived human experience.
Because the book is a series of essays, many of which have been published previously, it plays out in episodic form. Some episodes, like “The Neurodiversity Paradigm,” are broad and sweeping meditations on the nature of autism and life as an autistic. Others are much narrower events that bring some small concept into focus, like “The Tracks of My Tears.” Some are fairly straightforward, factual affairs injected with a bit of wry humor, such as Bowman’s reciting of poetry at unsuspecting passers-by at the Indianapolis Arts garden. And some are raw and emotional explorations of the disdain with which many in society still hold autism and autistics, like “A Portrait of the Autist as a Young Man.”
But even as the book plays out episodically, there are uniting threads throughout. These threads include the author’s giving his voice to lived autistic experience, and all that that entails, including regularly being ignored and talked down to. But they also include the enduring nature of beauty and art, and about God in the midst of it all; about what it’s like to move to a new place, and how his love for routine (common among autistics) makes such a drastic life change even more stressful and terrifying than it already is; and about tragedy and triumph and even somewhat mundane-seeming moments that offer little tidbits of grace.
And he talks about all the different ways autism affects his life in the faith – or perhaps more accurately, the way people’s reactions to (and often lack of understanding of) autism affects his ability to function comfortably and in his own way in communities of faith. He talks about insisting on life and survival when neither are foregone conclusions for autistics in the same way that they are for neurotypicals. He insists on being seen for who he is rather than what many perceive him to lack, and he sprinkles in hard data about what autism actually is, for those who aren’t aware.
If there is one thing I found myself wishing for more of, it would likely be even more detail about the role that autism plays in the author’s experience of the faith in the abstract, rather than as played out in particular communities of faith. Of course, that’s more my problem than the book’s; that simply isn’t what this memoir is. Most people’s lived faith is not systematic, but largely episodic. It’s a series of moments, a chain of encounters with God, and particularly coming to know God through the people of God. That this is exactly the type of life in the faith that Bowman Jr. shows is consistent with the book on the whole: autistic experience is different from neurotypical experience, but not completely foreign.
Bowman Jr. also anticipates some additional criticisms: “[The essays] reflect my autistic brain. I repeat things. I hold the same thing up to different lights to see its angles and the qualities of its shadows. I leave some thoughts half-finished. I define and hyperarticulate something small, or take a wildly deep dive into a minor point. And I frequently can’t see the forest for the trees: the whole for the parts, the larger story for the details. That may feel jarring to a reader at times, just as being around an autistic person feels jarring to many neurotypicals. I ask you: Stick with it. Let us teach you how to love us.” (1)
Ultimately, what Bowman Jr. gives us in On the Spectrum is even greater than the sum of its considerable parts. It is a glimpse of autistic life for those who have not seen it (as well as those who have not really looked) before; a small bit of experience of the holiness and the beauty and the difficulty of living as an autistic person in a world that doesn’t expect it, isn’t prepared for it, and even frequently actively discourages or maligns it. But for anyone willing to read it, whether neurodiverse or neurotypical, it is that most precious of gifts: the chance to see the face of Christ a bit more clearly.
Daniel Bowman Jr., On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith & the Gifts of Neurodiversity (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021), 9.
