Before this book I knew Fern Brady not at all. She’s made a name for herself between the UK comedy and television scenes, and while I enjoy a British panel show I’ve managed to miss Brady entirely. I decided to request this book from NetGalley based purely on the fact that this is a memoir of a woman who was diagnosed with autism as an adult and that’s a story I am very interested in. Like Brady, I too do a reasonably convincing impression of a normal woman. I also am increasingly uninterested in the cost of that trade-off. Strong Female Character is about the years in between Brady approaching her doctor in her teens certain that Autism explained life the way she experienced it and receiving her formal diagnosis at age 34. It is also about the unique combination of sexism and ableism that so often prevents autistic women from getting diagnosed until adulthood. An earlier diagnosis that could have provided correct supports would have likely kept Brady from feeling as bitter about what could have been different if she wasn’t socialized as allistic.
Coming from a working-class Scottish Catholic family, Fern Brady wasn’t exactly poised to receive an open-minded acceptance of her neurodivergence. In Strong Female Character she reflects, utilizing her piercing clarity and wit, 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. This memoir tracks Brady’s futile attempts at employment, her increasingly destructive coping mechanisms, and the meltdowns that left her mind (and apartment) in ruins. Her chaotic, nonlinear journey is a testament to life at the intersection of womanhood and neurodiversity, 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.
My autism also didn’t get on radar until well into my adulthood. I didn’t pursue an official diagnosis because I felt it wouldn’t bring me any additional supports. A position that my therapist basically supported by not providing any counter logic. Learning how to cope with my autism (and various neuro-spiciness) is in part from my therapist – who is a wonderful woman who has helped me in some very big, important ways – but in larger part from the autism communities online comprised of other late-diagnosed women and non-binary folk. The autistic social media folks who put aside any worries they might have about being so public about their own experiences are filling the void where support from the health services and medical community should be. As is Brady in chronicling exactly what her meltdowns look and feel like and what has worked for her and what hasn’t and what they’ve cost her over the years. It simply isn’t out there.
Without the kind of transgressive honesty Brady is using here, a lot of us would be in much worse shape. While reading I found myself wondering would we know how to live in a way that avoids meltdowns and shutdowns and having the plethora of maladaptive coping mechanisms that I do if the system cared at all about dealing with and understanding the kinds of autism Brady and I experience (they have overlap while still being quite different… because it’s a spectrum). These mechanisms are now very deeply entrenched, and I will have a lot of work to do if I want to undo them. But at least I have another book by a late diagnosed woman to go to.
I received an ARC of this book from Penguin Random House via NetGalley. It has not affected the contents of this review.
(This is the first book I’ve read and reviewed in nearly three months. It feels good to be back. I hope it continues.)
Bingo Square On the Air. Fern Brady is publicly sharing her experiences for the benefit of others, as the communities on podcasts, the internet, and elsewhere have helped her.