Untypical by Pete Wharmby (published. 16/03/2023 – Harper Collins)

Rainbow Reads Book Club Reviews – Aar Jae Williams

In the second book from the former school teacher again, but with a different interpretation on the topic of autism and neurodivergency Pete Wharmby pens an extension to his tweets. The motivation and purpose from the books so far Wharmby has published is down to the internet neurodivergent community, his tweets I can only thank him from extending my own understanding of autism. Something he has a craft for is words which you’d hope from an English teacher with the twitter handle @commaficinado for someone who is received in his adult life a diagnoses of autism and ADHD learning and growing his understanding from the Neurodivergent community online had an ability to know what to say.

Wharmby has written a book from a place motivated from a place of feeling disgruntled and aggrieved about the misconceptions, myths and legends of autism that leave us by our neurotypical counterparts misunderstood. Pete only diagnosed at the aged of 34 in 2017 has lived a life of being misunderstood through a time of unbeknown to himself he was autistic and not of the neuro-majority hopes this book can be a means of with his book a start of manifesting the end of the myths that sustain ableism that endures as a part of autistic peoples lives. The content to an autistic person feels all to familiar; this familiarity makes me feel reassured that there is a true autistic community and autistic culture. Wharmby in penning the book makes clear that he is only just one person one, however, whilst speaking only as one person this book is informed by hundreds of conversations with autistic people and the many connections he has made since his diagnoses with the community. I feel as in the acknowledgements its clear listing long list of people in the neurodivergent community from Sara Gibbs, Holly Smale, Emily Burke, Ella Tabb, Liam O’Dell, Kieran Rose, Eric Garcia  (see acknowledgements in the book) this book wouldn’t be without the autistic community. After all it reads that his (Pete Wharmby’s) experiences are not unique to him and not an exciting story to tell. It is told through his empathy of his fellow brethren and their feelings he carries.  

Putting the world to rights in terms of how it is not designed for autistic people without being a super-power nor any of others are superheroes but with what we can do we can have abilities can help save the world. With experiencing ableisms and a society, a world not designed for us this book addresses this matter emphasising as a minority and a group that is classed as disabled we find ourselves vulnerable, but our vulnerabilities, our traits remain invisible. Autism is an invisible disability to those like Wharmby diagnosed later in life are, after years of masking and assuming he was allistic experiences imposter syndrome of not feeling at times he is autistic. 

Touching on themes that are woven fabric of autistic culture, something that is certain is a thing. Whilst autism is a disability most people may think of that through a medical lens but it has its social construct as for neurological conditions of neurodivergent community of neurological differences where autism is counted as with ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, Tourette’s etc. Autism has its culture based around its history, our means of thinking as expressed in ‘Untypical’ which explores autistic masking and camouflaging, briefly focused of special interests (see What I Want to Talk About by Pete Wharmby ,2022) , ‘Spiky Skillsets’ where as you could come up top trumps on mastermind on preferred topic and be top of the class in certain key subjects where as unable to tie laces; Wharmby explores the practical struggles without a diagnoses of dyspraxia for struggles with certain areas of learning and education can mean we have learning disabilities co-occurred diagnoses. I could relate to Pete on his struggles with doing shoe-laces but with a diagnoses of dyspraxia, with focus of the common experience of ‘spiky skill sets’s that autistic people can also have diagnoses of such as dyspraxia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia with in some cases practical struggles related to Elhers-Danlos Syndrome a hypermobile disability. Other chapters and sections of the book go on to explore areas of employment, stress and justice.

The theme of injustice that is in the last chapter of ‘Untypical’ is carried throughout the book. The book’s subtitle after all is ‘How the world isn’t built for autistic people and what we should all doing about it’ informing the book to manifest changes for autistic people in which Wharmby reflects from his own experiences to tell a wider community, to the allistic community chipping away through the myths to establish truth in what people need to understand about autism and how to help an autistic person. After all with as stated in the book an approximation of ‘230 million’ the worlds population are said to be autistic and many yet to know they are of the neuro-minority that is 1351 times the population of Wales. Unlike Wales, with an enriched culture, history and languages documented over millennia. The autistic people have only had our identity since the term was coined in 1911 our culture, stories and identities are still being written and told.

This book only can serve as a minuscule fraction of the topic of autism, so please I insist if this is your first time reading on the topic or if you have but not by a autistic person this mustn’t be your last but your beginning. I diagnosed as  autistic at the age of ten over a decade ago know I’m going to hopefully fill my phone with audio-books and book-shelves by the boat-load on the topic and hope to make this diverse as possible. Wharmby himself disclaims in the introduction that ‘its impossible for me to to speak for the whole diverse demographic’ then warns politely ‘don’t accuse me of being a bossy voice, speaking over all others’ which as a white cis-male who is (self) employed could’ve used his privilege to ignore the experiences of others and said with a domineering tone. He uses book to challenge outdated stereotypes of autism in popular culture from the white cis-male under traits woefully cliched examples of Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory) and Rainman.

The most significant thing Wharmby tries to do is reaching out to allistic people focusing on pressing matters that delve into the disabling aspects of autism and of areas where autistic people may become stressed, depressed and anxious. Mental health issues with autism isn’t uncommon and that is true for the author as he has struggled and been diagnosed with depression unsurprising, detailing the alarming statistics around the life expectancy of autistic people and quality of life for autistic folk describing how autistic people can find themselves homeless and in poverty as around 80% find themselves out of the work that includes part time contracts and anything that is economic work where 12% of all people homeless are autistic this number given the lack of access to diagnoses for adults and more people forced to go private could be higher. with little or no support from the public sector. With our stress levels due to sensory differences and trauma shot-higher to our allistic counter-parts suicide and suicide attempts are three times more higher in autistic people than the general population. 

Pete Wharmby rightly states ‘as national scandals go, its petty dramatic’. Its too often that the autistic and neurodivergent community scrolling through social media something I’ve seen on Wharmby’s own twitter feed alarming and sobering reading where there is tragedy story after tragedy story and this should be a wake up a call.

As a call to action and for those who work with fields where they come across and can impact an autistic person’s life like Human Resources staff at a work-place, line managers and supervisors, school teachers, tutors, support assistants, headteacher, doctors, nurses, mental health therapists. Carefully worded, Wharmby is conscientious of its allistic reader who may before picking up the book may have not been well read on the topic of autism and autism culture or read only through workplace training, textbooks and encyclopaedic examples of autism because of this the choice of language is important. You if you want to be widely read need to find an accessible way of breaking down jargon and translate our experiences to allistic people from his twitter threads and exchanges Pete has already graduated on how to do this from the school of the internet. It takes a lot of bandwidth and though to breakdown the the terminology and description of our experiences. The importance is which textbooks can not or any training by an allistic person is give a person first example and apply it to reality and practice. Let’s take for example the spoon theory which is used in the disabled and in particular the chronically ill community to describe levels of energy to explain fatigue or flare-ups language which is used in many disabled communities including the autistic community in which burnouts and shutdowns and with the experience of sensory overwhelm it is resourceful to have a language to describe ones energy. Wharmby, however likens it in language I prefer as it is most logical to battery energy of a phone. We are all used to the energy of batteries but not to the use of spoons as a means of measurement as the purpose of a spoon is a shovel typically smaller than a shovel used for consuming and digesting soup, cereals, yogurts, ice cream or in the making of a tea or coffee neither plays significant role in measurement. 

Wharmby is of many neurodivergent advocates and activists that gives talks of autistic lived experiences to work-spaces, schools, universities, places of health and care support, councils and such with interest of seeing things improve for neurodivergent people who contact share stake in such environments referencing the importance of making changes in such environments when discussing the barriers to a decent health care system in the NHS with the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training in Learning Disability and Autism which saw his health needs misunderstood and not met by the NHS when he was treated for experiencing seizures which left Oliver with his epilepsy scared and confused but he wasn’t depressed something his parents knew when Oliver was discharged with antidepressant medication for anxiety. With the increase of medication his seizures increased later fiven diagnoses of psychosis and a mental illness medication. This is something his parents strongly felt that the doctors misunderstood Oliver’s autistic behaviours for that of a mental health disorder. Sadly, as the situation worsened and progressed as detailed by his parents in the campaign in his name detailed a very preventable death. They with his campaign work to campaign of better understanding of autism and learning disabilities which is something Wharmby advocates for with a health system that is hard to book an appointment with and one where it is hard for us to communicate and translate our needs.

The book is not an all out compilation and extensive hybrid of a textbook to memoir to learn more about the jargon and how the language and experiences referenced in the book applies to real life I direct you and recommend that you try to obtain a copy of Chloe Hayden’s ‘Different Not Less’ a book of a similar format of a semi-memoir with informative and explanatory tour around the experiences of autistic people. Both books are restricted to their own experiences and understanding and if you want to delve deep in a rabbit hole of neurodivergent conditions I recommend that this isn’t the only books you read on autism as Wharmby doesn’t tailor or speak of a autistic nons-speaker, an autistic queer, trans nonbinary person, an autistic person of colour, an autistic person who hasn’t been in mainstream education, an autistic person who may have been excluded or been removed from schooling after refusal. I’m sure that as a former educator and tutor that for the experience of autistic people in school Wharmby could easily fill another book on that matter. This his second book is a start.

I implore you to whether you allistic or autistic allow yourself to support any media on the topic of autism, neurodivergency and disability, of which are vastly under-represented in mainstream media and of my home nation of wales. With this nations cultures well taught due to the unity that geographically contained communities allow this hasn’t always be the case understanding our diversity of 230 million. Wharmby is one of the 230 million his book claims of then world autistic population no one can dictate on the topic but for a community entangled in trauma, persecution and oppression the whole populous should have their ears perked up and tuned in when they likely to find an autistic person in their lives and any space they may walk into and find people, that experience may become more common as there is more people by the day becoming more aware of this big fact about them and more autistic reproduce and create more generations of autistic people. 

As far as books go this is far damn important not to read and you’d be heartless not to care, not to be moved by it but however you shouldn’t be shocked nor surprise, I appreciate Wharmby for the size of his platform his privilege to put this to paper and print. For the first time since I’ve finished my GCSE English class have I picked up a book and read it cover to cover, and not even then were I so engrossed with each page thats pretty impressive work Pete!