★ ★ ★ ★
For anyone in our community who follows the #ActuallyAutistic hashtag, you will likely be aware of former teacher Pete Wharmby’s brilliant posts about the autistic experience. He details our day-to-day lives in a way that is informative but also offers solidarity. What I Want to Talk About is no different.
Wharmby excellently ties his Special Interests (yes, they should be capitalised) to his life, illuminating both. Whether it be the relaxing inner world of Minecraft serving as a perfect escape and tool to cope with becoming a parent, or how his family made more sense through the lens of dinosaur species. This book feels like it is revealing our secret world, but at the same time it unifies us autistics, giving concrete evidence to say ‘look, these interests help us regulate, they help us make sense of the world, they aren’t obsessions or trivial hobbies’. In that, Wharmby has made great strides to show how our interests aren’t childish or silly, but serious and life-affirming. Even Special Interests I do not share such as Warhammer and Marvel made for fascinating reading, but it was exciting to see someone else’s love of Sonic The Hedgehog and Lego, chiming with my own.
Wharmby’s tone is sometimes earnest, as if on the defensive, this isn’t a criticism, but something I feel too, that we as autistics feel the need to explain ourselves in a careful manner, even in the written word, scared to be misunderstood yet again. Wharmby should be assured that his book serves as a fitting primer on the subject of Special Interests.
What I Want to Talk About: How Special Interests Shape a Life by Pete Wharmby is available from JKP Publishing
