Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement—Open Access
Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the frontline, edited by Steven K. Kapp, is available free online. This open access book has chapters from 21 authors who have been pivotal in the neurodiversity movement. These contributors “have shifted the landscape toward viewing autism in social terms of human rights and identity to accept, rather than a medical collection of deficits and symptoms.” –publisher webpage. Kapp, the editor, is a sociology research fellow at the University of Exeter in the U.K. who studies autism, neurodiversity, and self-advocacy.
The book includes chapters by advocates who are familiar to Landmark College. Neurodiversity advisor and frequent campus visitor John Elder Robison contributed a piece titled “My time at Autism Speaks.” Lydia X. Z. Brown, who spoke at Landmark in 2019, co-wrote “Torture in the name of treatment: The mission to stop the shocks in the age of deinstitutionalization.” This collection documents the hard work and advocacy that has sustained the neurodiversity movement.