Reviews

There’s a lot of great information in this book (especially the citation of whitepapers and Price’s determination to include first-person accounts from other people) and some useful frameworks for introspection. I appreciated basically every chart in the book. But a lot (most?) of the book is also almost aggressively upbeat in a very stereotypically self-help kind of way (ex: acknowledging societal systems of oppression but then primarily focusing on how you, too, will be a happier and better person once you can stop masking) that I found grating and on the edge of disingenuous. I think there’s an audience for those parts of the books, but I personally didn’t need brainstorming worksheets or so many reassurances that I have a separate and valid identity below my mask. And the relentless optimism often felt odd in the midst of so many white paper citations on, for example, health issues often comorbid with Autism, or the relationship between police violence and mental illness. Overall I felt like I got what I wanted out of this but could also have stopped reading after chapter 2 or 3 and I wouldn’t have missed anything. But like A Field Guide to Earthlings this will probably be a book I continue to recommend to others (with the above caveats) because of the value of those first few chapters and the other points of view Price is so careful about adding in next to his own.