In a Different Key: The Story of Autism Read Free Page A

launched into the song, keeping her gaze fixed at some point in space above the keyboard. Though she never once looked up, the whole theater spotted the slight smile when, mid-song, applause broke out for the first time. When they finished the piece, Jodi leapt to her feet and threw her arms around Perry in a long, awkward hug, which everyone there recognized as the expression of a child with autism who was, in that moment, exceedingly happy. That was when everyone cried. And when Robert and Michelle, standing in the wings, knew they had just helped create a moment that would last longer than any they had created on this stage before. They were right. By 2015, more than 9 million people had watched the DiPiazza-Perry duet online.
    At one time—and it was only a generation or so ago—what happened that night in the Beacon Theatre on Broadway would have been nothing short of astounding. Back then, autism was shrouded in shame, secrecy, and ignorance—certainly not a cause to which movie stars lent their names, amid lights, limousines, and paparazzi. Indeed, the diagnosis itself does not go back far, dating only to World War II. Then, once the label existed, children who were given it—and their families—were met with ignorance and bigotry. They were barred from public schools and banished to institutions, where they remained through their adult years, often until death. Their parents, and in particular their mothers, were routinely blamed for causing their autism. So little research on autism had been done that no counterargument existed. Most people did not even know of the condition, and the word “autism” prompted almost no recognition from the general public. It was a bitter irony that parents sometimes heard themselves congratulated for having such an “artistic” girl or boy.
    This book tells the story of how and why cultural attitudes toward autism shifted so profoundly, from an era when autism was isolating and almost wholly misunderstood to today, when stars flock to a Broadwaytheater to talk about and raise millions for the cause. It is a story woven together from a range of sources—memoirs by parents and doctors, long-forgotten scientific writings and documentary films, newspaper clippings, archived documents, and interviews with more than two hundred people who have autism, have studied autism, or have raised children with the diagnosis. What emerges is an account of the heart, the sweat, the stubbornness, and the fight displayed by an always-evolving cast of players, whose commitment to changing the world, over three to four generations, turned autism from a condition that was barely recognized into the most talked-about, most controversial, diagnosis of our time.
    Thousands were involved in bringing about that outcome: doctors and social workers, educators and lawyers, researchers and writers. More recently, individuals with autism have often taken a more active role, speaking for themselves. The most constant presence, however, is that of parents: mothers and fathers standing up for their children, driven sometimes by desperation, sometimes by anger, and always by love. Their two main goals—to find out why their children have autism, and to make it go away—remain unfulfilled, while recently some are challenging the worthiness of the goals themselves. Nevertheless, the paths those parents took, the hills they climbed and the valleys they entered, chart much of the landscape laid out in these pages.
    The story of autism is actually many stories, set on different continents and overlapping in time, and circling back on one another, which can make the tale challenging to tell and not always easy to follow. Ideas cross-pollinate, major players make cameos in one another’s stories, and entire story lines unfold at different paces thousands of miles apart. But that was just how it happened. In that way, the story of autism resembles autism itself. Both defy any sort of simple, straight-line