Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Vrouwen met autisme.
I don't usually read non-fiction about autism despite having it myself, but mom gave me this book to check out. So I did.
In this book, thirteen women of various walks of life speak about their experiences in life with autism. They note when they got diagnosed and how they deal with it on a daily basis, as well as their story.
The book is...pretty much exactly what the title promises. You want to read about thirteen women and their experience with autism? It's what you get and it does it well. Each chapter is written by one of the women, in which she details her life with autism. It's interesting and it really does showcase how autism is a spectrum; everyone's experiences and life's story is totally unique and nobody really has the exact same type of autism. It's a spectrum after, all.
I do have to admit that after a few chapters it didn't hold my attention as much anymore. It was still interesting but I guess that this is just not a non-fiction topic I'm as interested in as the non-fiction books I usually read (centered around nature and wildlife). That's not what bothered me the most, though.
For one, this book keeps referring to the women by their "outdated" diagnosis, when in the prologue they themselves even note how nowadays all the older types of autism (e.g. PDD NOS) are nowadays not used anymore and instead merged into "autism spectrum disorder (ASD)". The book also keeps using the term "Asperger", a word which has especially fallen out of favor due to being named after a literal Nazi. So with these names all being obsolete (just ASD is enough) and the book itself even acknowledging it in the introduction chapter, it's weird that it keeps using the outdated terms when talking about each woman's diagnosis. Sure, when they are talking in their books about how they got diagnosed they may bring up the older terms (since they have been obsolete and merged into ASD since 2013, and a lot of these women got diagnosed before that), but when talking in current-day terms they don't really have any reason to use the old terms anymore.
Also, I did spot several typo's in this book. Which is just not good, obviously, shouldn't really have to be said.
Overall I consider this a decent book and I appreciate how it highlight's women's experiences with autism, it just didn't fully hold my attention and I was rather distracted by the outdated terminology being consistently used. It's fine, overall.
Rating: 3/5
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