A review by arwenundomiel03
Girl Unmasked: How Uncovering My Autism Saved My Life by Emily Katy

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This is an amazing book, and I am so so glad to have read it, and so grateful to Emily for having written it. Her honestly and openness about what she has been through is astounding - especially when parts of her life have been so challenging. The way she writes is beautiful - it’s so easy to picture everything that is happening and to see the colour in everything. Most of all though, I was blown away by one particular section of the book — about her diagnosis of autism - and in particular where she says that one reason that the diagnostic criteria fail autistic people is (not just because they are based on white, cis boys) because they are only diagnosing broken, struggling autistic people. Why should autistic people have to wait to the point where they are struggling so much that they *are* breaking to be diagnosed? They shouldn’t. They should receive a diagnosis and crucially *support and understanding* much earlier - before they reach the point of breaking, so that they can navigate the world with more understanding of themselves, why they are the way they are, and the fact that the struggle with some things when it feels to them that no one else does - they’re not weird, they’re not useless. They’re just autistic. And that’s amazing. 
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