Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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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). The letter to Virginia Woolf explores internalized ableism and the depiction of outcast femme characters in literature with examples pulled from Woolf’s biographical writings and Mrs. Dalloway, Stephen King’s Carrie, and Margaret Drabble’s novels. The letter to Adelheid Bloch speaks to Limburg’s experience as a Jewish and disabled woman. The letter to Frau V speaks to Limburg’s experience as a disabled mother and the child of a mother who did her best to advocate for her daughter in a society that offered absolutely no recourse to the kind of help and support she and her child needed. The letter to Katharina Kepler focused on the traumatic and literally life-threatening effects of social isolation and stigmatization of disabled people. And finally, the letter to the late Caron Freeborn is an emotional and moving “thank you” from the author to a fellow Autistic writer, inspiration, and friend. While surviving the decade after graduation working at an assortment of short-lived jobs (including a comically inappropriate stint as a careers officer), Limburg met her future husband – a computer scientist called Chris – in her late twenties. “Dating was horrible,” she tells me. “Autistic women don’t simper. We have no interest in making a man feel big. Chris has been my only proper ‘relationship’, as opposed to ‘encounter’.” As Limburg writes of Woolf, the very nature and texture of their failures feels so familiar to me. Coming home, a mothering, a thought to think through. Thankful. My personal favourites were the letter to Virginia Woolf, Adelheid Bloch, and Katharina Kepler - although every letter is exceptional.

Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Book Review: Joanne Limburg’s Letters to My Weird Sisters: On

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?”One of the most interesting figures encountered in the book is Frau V. Little is known about her, including her true name. A 1944 article by Hans Asperger – among the first researchers of autism –mentions her as the mother of one of the boys he was treating in the University Paediatric Clinic in Vienna. Using the scarce details available, Limburg constructs a portrait of a woman who cares deeply about her child’s fate but also shares many traits with him. However, notably, Asperger did not consider the possibility of Frau V being autistic herself. I unsettle people. I'm uncanny. Being around me doesn't always feel like being around a fellow human being, and that discomfort rarely brings out the best in people. If you don't register someone as a fellow human being, you are less inclined to treat them like one.” Limburg describes movingly her own struggles as a new mother and the pressure of society's expectations...Through such delicately intertwined experiences, Limburg quietly shouts for change.' Times Literary Supplement I honestly don't know what I think of this one. I think that Joanne's story was one that I knew all to well; growing up undiagnosed autistic for years is traumatic and her experiences with OCD and feeling socially isolated were things that hit slightly too close to home. I really liked her idea of writing letters to 'weird women' who have graced the earth too - not all of these figures had definite signs of autism but they were all deemed heathens and ostracised from their communities for one reason or another. Joanne related the stories of each of these women to her own very well and it made me feel quite seen; there's other women out there just like me. I also liked the academic references she used in the book to studies and other research that people had done - it made the whole thing way more interesting to me. I had a duty to bear witness… to remember, to make sure that your memories and names would never be erased as your living bodies and minds had been.”

Letters To My Weird Sisters by Joanne Limburg | Waterstones Letters To My Weird Sisters by Joanne Limburg | Waterstones

There is so much to love about this book, particularly for anybody already interested in any of the subject matters explored.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. 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. An autism diagnosis in midlife enabled Joanne Limburg to finally make sense of why her emotional expression, social discomfort and presentation had always marked her as an outsider. I found the mention of oppression as a woman bound in oppression as patient interesting for me to reflect on, as I in body and mind, was aware of my identity as a patient, a defect prior to that of my sex. In that being hospitalised through childhood and growing in clinical environments, I then became aware of the vulnerabilities that my assigned sex bestowed me.

Joanne Limburg: ‘Autistic women don’t simper. We have no

The themes in this book are of interest to me, particularly the exploration of Limburg’s own experience with autism, as, like so many other things in life, we are still only beginning to understand from the perspective of female presentation. If you have any level of interest in this subject, you will find this book honest and enlightening and you will more than likely want to read more. It is that autistic weird girl critters blow the cover on successful girlhood as an entirely made up thing, be it the fear of this the reason for ostracism and overt othering. The neurotypical creation of a negative space that screams “we are not like them and could never be transformed into their incorrectness”.

Featured Reviews

Institutionalization can be a form of social death and death was what Baggs wished for. What they are coming to realize in this passage is that just because society no longer feels for you, it doesn't automatically mean that you no longer feel for yourself—nothing as merciful as that.”