Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
Devon Price
A deep dive into the spectrum of Autistic experience and the phenomenon of masked Autism, giving individuals the tools to safely uncover their true selves while broadening society’s narrow understanding of neurodiversity“A remarkable work that will stand at the forefront of the neurodiversity movement. ”—Barry M. Prizant, PhD, CCC-SLP, author of Uniquely A Different Way of Seeing AutismFor every visibly Autistic person you meet, there are countless “masked” Autistic people who pass as neurotypical. more
304 pages, Hardcover
First published Harmony
4.48
Rating
12482
Ratings
1576
Reviews
Devon Price
6 books 961 followers
Dr. Devon Price is a social psychologist, writer, and professor at Loyola University of Chicago’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Price’s work has appeared in numerous publications such as Slate, The Rumpus, NPR, and HuffPost and has been featured on the front page of Medium numerous times. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.Community reviews
An absolutely essential read for people on the spectrum and those who love them. more
"To unmask is to lay bare a proud face of noncompliance, to refuse to buckle under the weight of neurotypical demands. It’s an act of bold activism as well as a declaration of self-worth. "Hello, I'm Jenna and I'm neurospicy. When I read Hannah Gadsby's brilliant memoir Ten Steps to Nanette last month, I was shocked to discover how much I related to things she said pertaining to her being Autistic. I realized how little I knew about autism and how much I wanted to learn more. more
This is a Non-Fiction book about Autism. I found a lot of this book interesting and informative, but there was some things in this book I do not fully agree with. I think each person Autism story is very different which this book did a good job showing that fact. Maybe it is just the area I live in North Carolina, USA, but Autism test is under mental health testing (so health insurance covers it with just a normal co-pay). I also live near a big hospital that has a part that just does Autism Testing. more
Breaking my "no reviews" policy because this mess of a book somehow has over 4 stars on here. This is not a good book. This is not even an acceptable book. At times I was convinced that it must be satire, but apparently it is not(. ) About 2% of the content in this book is interesting and useful. more
lots of validating stuff but I was annoyed by his generalizations. this concept of unmasking is only available to very specific types of people, mostly white, documented, middle class, low needs individuals. he mentions the risks associated for more marginalized people at a few different points but something just didn’t sit right with me. maybe i can explain it from my issue with the subtitle: “Discovering the new faces of neurodiversity” — “Discover” sounds like some weird colonizer mentality, and none of the “faces” are new, they’ve just been cast out, murdered, institutionalized, imprisoned, etc. he’s a middle class academic who’s anti-work, but I don’t think he’s held a labor or even retail job in his life. more
*just going to pretend I read the last two chapters thoroughly*- this book is most suited for readers living in the USA, understandable as the writer is also American. but it does make it a lot less relatable for anyone not American. - it started out good, but especially in te second half of the book I really felt this was written for a specific type of autistic person. Even tough the author supports that every autistic person is unique (which is, especially in research quite hard to deal with), the only type of autism that was represented was the "autistic nerd" that has a special interest, some talent and a hyperfocus. The constant use of "we" to represent a bunch of people that are vastly different was getting annoying. more
I got diagnosed with autism at 17 a couple years ago and have been experiencing burnout lately, so I thought learning about unmasking might be beneficial to me. This was my mindset going into the book, and what I hoped to learn about. I greatly enjoyed the first half of this book — it felt informative, had relevant anecdotes, etc. Overall, I felt like I could (kind of) connect with the material. I appreciated that Dr. more
Dr. Devon Price is a social psychologist, writer, activist, and professor at Chicago's Loyola University who, with "Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity," has crafted an informative, insightful, and engaging deep dive into the Autism experience and, more specifically, the phenomenon known as "masking," a coping skill in which Autistic people with identifiable traits hide those traits in an effort to better blend in to a society that often rejects these traits as "odd" or "needy. "Unfortunately, this coping mechanism often comes at the expense of one's mental health and with "Unmasking Autism" Dr. Price offers a surprisingly straightforward and accessible path toward unmasking with exercises that encourage self-expression including celebrating special interests, cultivating Autistic relationships, reframing Autistic stereotypes, and rediscovering one's own values. Dr. more
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to give it four stars. I felt it started pretty well in the first couple of chapters. Then the author lost me in the middle chapters. I looked ahead, and I hoped that I might recover some ground in the final chapters, which by title appeared to promise some hope. more
This book is short, accessible and very informative. Price is trans and autistic, and was only diagnosed later in life. He blends narrative of his own lived experience with many interviews and thorough research. This book encourages compassion, self-knowledge, community building, and unmasking- the process of shedding the habits many autistic people employ to hide or mask their autistic traits. As a queer person pondering my own potential place on the autism spectrum, this book was an excellent introduction and gave me a lot of food for thought. more
Still working through my thoughts on this book. I've followed Dr. Price's work for a few years now and have repeatedly been moved to shift my thinking substantially on many issues as a result of his work and writing. Having read his Medium essays, I see many of his best pieces folded into the chapters of this book. I think I expected (or perhaps just wanted) something slightly more academically-focused on the phenomenon of masking that I could throw in the face of everyone in my academic psych department, but the format instead is more like "you're probably reading this because you think you might be a masked neurodivergent person, or you love someone who is, so here are a few citations of evidence about this chapter's topics and then here is an excellent exercise for identifying your values within this context. more
If you're a mild-mannered autistic person, who just wants to get on with life without making a fuss, this probably is not the book for you. This often reads like a manifesto of Autistic pride, which goes beyond advocacy to calls for activism. I wish there were more room in this book for a nuanced approach and acknowledgement that not every autistic wants to live out loud. Gender issues come a very close second to autism on this book's agenda, closely followed by issues of race and class and a critique of society at large. . more
I picked Unmasking Autism by Devon Price to give myself a broader insight into the neurodiversity movement happening in autism but I trudged to finish this book in order to complete my review. This book mostly stayed on the topic of how LGBTQ seems to almost have a symbiotic relationship with autism and how they are under diagnosed or have slipped through the cracks. Maybe it was my expectation from the title that threw me off, but I expected less about gender issues and more about autism per say. I don’t see this book helping anyone get a better grasp of autism. I do however see a reader coming off believing that almost all autistic individuals have gender identification issues and tend to belong under the LGBTQ umbrella, and I doubt that to be factual. more
I feel like maybe “Autistic Self-Love: finding self-acceptance and self-confidence in a neurotypical world” would have been a better title. When I read with this framework, it felt like a 4 star book. But when I read it hoping to “discover” (which is a very problematic term when used about people) “new faces”, I felt like this book didn’t present enough statistics for who these new faces are. The author makes a lot of generalizations for how Autistic people who mask experience the sensory and social worlds and his generalizing honestly just revealed (to me) an embarrassing lack of awareness and insight on the part of the author. How can he presume to say how everyone experiences light or sound or touch or internal body functions, etc. more
Ughhh. I wanted to like this book SO bad. The disappointment is particularly painful because I had such high hopes. First, let’s go through the positives. He makes a lot of interesting points. more
It’s like Tumblr became animate and wrote a book. The handful of potentially interesting or useful bits are buried in a mountain of bullshit sprung from the author’s cartoonish and fanciful web of logically-inconsistent ideological priors. . more
I’m a therapist and this book has been essential in understanding my neurodivergent clients and people in my life. As a therapist, I was taught a lot of false information about neurodivergence through the lens of the medical model - and I’m really finding the affirming perspective in Dr. Price’s book so helpful in supporting my clients in embracing a more authentic life. I think therapists need to read more books like these and start to unlearn the harms the mental health community has perpetuated towards people who don’t fit the neurotypical mold. . more
This is not a science book. In fact, the author deliberately brushes aside medical science and downplays the biological basis of autism. Price advocates for self-diagnosis and claims talking about biology is unnecessary and outdated. While it is important to value the lived experience of an autistic person, such an identity-obsessed, anti-science stance is hardly persuasive. It is clear that the book aims at a narrow subset of autistic people: mildly autistic, educated, middle-class, especially those who are also transgender or non-binary. more
4. 5 stars. overall this book is incredibly well-put-together. it seamlessly blends academic knowledge with personal experiences and interviews, and has a really strong voice that’s readable and informative while not being “too” academic. I wish I’d had this to read five years ago, I think I would’ve gotten more out of it. more
I’m near the end of the second chapter and I’ve decided to abandon this book. It’s too infuriating for me to continue on. This is not what I expected and definitely not what I needed. Upon reflection I think the author made it clear what the book was about but I wanted to believe it was about something else, that is, masking/unmasking. To lump the struggle of gender identity, race, and social class into the same bucket as an ASD diagnosis feels extremely problematic to me and it undermines the struggles ASD carries all on its own. more
Epically awful book by a nonclinical psychologist who use personal experience to make broad claims about a complex condition; Falsely attributes symptoms of comorbid conditions as symptoms of autism; and fails to point the reader to any solid empirical research. Instead of this, read anything by Simon Baron Cohen. more
Feeling seen and learnt so much about myself because of this book <3. more
this was good i think though I found it very odd he did not mention Asian Americans in his paragraph about other non-white Autistics. if there's no data you still gotta say that otherwise you're simply contributing to the erasure. more
I found this near unreadable. I hoped this would be about masking and unmasking autism, instead it's anecdotal, personal and has a structure that made me want to tear my hair out. Unlike the author I do think strict guidelines what is and isn't autism can be helpful (because what even are we talking about if the diagnosis is as vague as Price wants it to be. ) and I think diagnosis is relevent. If it were possible, I'd get tested myself, but as of now, that sadly isn't in the cards for me even though my therapist encourages it. more
This is an incredible book and resource. I can't recommend this enough to anyone on their self discovery journey with Autism enough, but especially to Trans folks, BIPOC, and women, this book focuses on these groups in examples and stories and does a great job of explaining how these groups have historically been left out of Autism research and diagnosis until more recently and highlights ways Autism presents for them. I listened to the audiobook read by the author and it's great, but I plan to get a physical copy for rereading and referencing. There are writing prompts and so much information that I want to revisit. I previously read Devon Price's Laziness Does Not Exist and I truly think both of these books are must reads for everyone. more
This was such an incredible book. Written by an autistic trans social psychologist, this focused on high masking autistic experiences. He begins by talking about who is more likely to mask/less likely to be diagnosed as a child, what traits get overlooked, issues with how autism is "treated". Then, he goes into what masking can look like, how we might decide to unmask, and ending with what we need to do as a society to make it a safe place for people to live unmasked. I really loved that he talks so much about the social - not just ableism and stigma, but also aspects of racism, impact of poverty, and transphobia, among other things. more
This is a truly exceptional book. I went into this hoping for some answers in regards to my own neurodiversity and while I did get some answers, I feel like I also left with some questions but that is okay. There's so many moments from this book that I bookmarked and I would love to grab a physical copy to annotate and highlight and make notes because I know that there's a lot of moments that I'd like to go back to. I definitely recommend this book if you are autistic or think you might be. I wish I was surprised that almost every negative review of this book attacks the author's take on queerness and transness in relation to autism but I'm not. more
More Progressive Self-Help/ Indoctrination Reinforcement Than Scientific Explanation. If you're an Autistic of a "Progressive" bent that hates anything white and/ or anything male, this is a great self help book that won't challenge you at all and may help explain a few things. If you care about scientific objectivity and/ or are not Autistic yourself and/ or are *not* a racist misandrist. eh, there's still a bit to be gleamed, but you're going to have to put up with a *lot* of racist misandrist anti-science drivel to get to it. Which is highly disappointing. more
As a mom of a recently diagnosed daughter with Autism, I found many explanations in the book helpful and enlightening. However, there were many times the author talked about unmasking as if it was only a neurodiverse problem when really, I would venture to say most neurotypical people mask as well, only to a lesser extent and less in a physical manner. Most people choose to mask their true selves because of either fear or rejection, as vulnerability has high costs and it’s easier to be what people expect than be authentic with so much risk involved in being honest or transparent. “Cancel culture” is a great example of this. So while the advice and steps do apply to Autistics, they really apply to *any* person, and therefore didn’t feel like new information or altogether specific. more
This is such an important piece of work regardless if you know someone who's autistic. It helped me to not only understand the areas in which our ablest society denies disabled people the opportunities to be able to fully participate in society, but shames them for not conforming to our socially constructed "neurotypical" world. I gained a deeper understanding of how the autistic brain works and the sheer trauma societal ignorance has caused them by not respecting, supporting, listening, and advocating for their needs. Furthermore, while this book is specific to affording autists a safe space to unmask (to be able to honor their authentic selves and stand in their own truth without fear of judgement, ridicule, alienation, getting fired, denied housing or a job, being beaten or killed) it would be a wonderful world if everyone was able to safely unmask and make room for everyone else at their table despite our differences. more