Strong Female Character (Unabridged)
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4.8 • 27 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Witty, dry, and gimlet-eyed, this is a necessary corrective in a world where Autistic women are all either written off as quiet and docile, or erased entirely.” —Devon Price, Ph.D., author of Unmasking Autism
Scottish comedian Fern Brady was told she couldn't be autistic because she'd had loads of boyfriends and is good at eye contact. In this frank and surreal memoir, she delivers a sharp and often hilarious portrait of neurodivergence and living unmasked.
Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award • A Harper’s Bazaar Best Book of the Year
After reading about autism in her teens, Fern Brady knew instinctively that she had it—autism explained her sensory issues, her meltdowns, her inability to pick up on social cues—and she told her doctor as much. But it took until she was thirty-four for her to get diagnosed.
Strong Female Character is about the years in between, and the unique combination of sexism and ableism that so often prevents autistic women from getting diagnosed until adulthood. Coming from a working-class Scottish Catholic family, Fern wasn’t exactly poised to receive an open-minded acceptance of her neurodivergence. With the piercing clarity and wit that has put her at the top of the British comedy scene, she now reflects on the ways her undiagnosed autism influenced her youth, from the tree that functioned as her childhood best friend to the psychiatric facility where she ended up when neither her parents nor school knew what to do with her.
In a memoir as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, Fern leaves no stone unturned while detailing her futile attempts at employment, her increasingly destructive coping mechanisms, and the meltdowns that left her mind (and apartment) in ruins. Her chaotic, nonlinear journey—from stripping to getting arrested to finding a lifeline in comedy to her breakout appearance on the Taskmaster TV show as her full, unmasked self—is both a remarkable coming-of-age tale and a dark but poignant tribute to life at the intersection of womanhood and neurodiversity.
Strong Female Character is a story of how being female can get in the way of being autistic and how being autistic gets in the way of being the 'right kind' of woman.
Customer Reviews
Painful truth of the autistics’ experience in a neurotypical farce called society
If you aren’t autistic, it may not be for you. If you are, it’s tough to read, especially if you late diagnosis autistic grieving for the time lost between your childhood and your diagnosis that left you with PTSD from asking the same questions about neurotypical hypocrisy, the farce called hierarchical society and illogical expectations that punish us for asking why.
The world according to the autistic experience told more accurately than any Ted Talk and a longer than a one.
Every word, experience and perception is almost identical to my own. It’s tough to read but it’s comforting at the same time.
Highlights delays responding to social phenomena that most sufferers probably struggle to understand
Well-worth the time of anyone who is curious about autism.
Brilliant
Thank you for writing this and for being so vulnerable. So much of my life is mirrored on these pages. I feel a bit more human. A bit less alone. Thank you.