Autism

Leo Bracaliello, a 2-year-old child who has been diagnosed with autism, sits cross-legged on his white carpet, his big blue eyes fixated on the face of a robot, singing in monotone, “If you’re happy and you know it…” When the song finishes, Leo mumbl

Naoki Hidishida has severe, nonverbal autism. Using an alphabet grid he was able to document his experiences of autism in his first book, The Reason I Jump, when he was 13 years old. Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8 (excerpted below) is his further account of life as a young adult navigating the world with autism, and was translated by the novelist David Mitchell with KA Yoshid

The Japanese author of The Reason I Jump and Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 describes what it’s like to be a person with nonverbal autism