Strong Female Character, by Fern Brady - Paige
The most I knew about Fern Brady before reading her memoir was that she made me laugh, had a thick Scottish accent, and that she was bold enough to wear a silver morph suit during her time on Taskmaster. When I found out this memoir was exploring her late Autistic Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, it clicked for me why I find her so engaging - she’s just like me. Fern’s story held a lot more sorrow than my own, and it made me aware of the privilege divide, even within a small minority’s unique experience: the vast underdiagnosis and ignorance of ASD in women.
Listening to this memoir as an audiobook, read by the author and subject, was the best choice I could have made for such a story. Folks often comment on how people with ASD speak in different tones - well, hearing it in Fern’s made it all the more powerful. She has an irreverent air that, combined with her comedic timing and story-telling skills, made this audiobook totally un-turn-off-able.
Her childhood was tumultuous, with instability and rejection like I could not even imagine, taking her between being sectioned, living in an outpatient home for “troubled teens”, and being homeless on a regular basis. It peeled back the uncomfortable layers of discrimination surrounding ASD that are so often overlooked in contemporary dialogues around the condition.
Being misdiagnosed as having a myriad of mental illnesses, such as OCD, Bipolar Disorder, and Depression as an Autistic woman is a common occurrence, which Fern brilliantly lays out with statistics alongside her own experience in this book. Though she had her suspicions of her neurodivergence from a young age, the narratives around ASD bullied and shamed her out of advocating for herself to medical professionals and her carers. By being medicated for conditions she didn’t have, whilst managing poverty, studying, and working without the support or allowances needed for an Autistic person, Fern lived through trauma that was beyond avoidable, and can now represent a demographic of women with similar stories.
Fern is intelligent beyond the witty remarks in her stand-up shows, and she holds nothing back with her raw and scathing observations and analyses of how our culture is failing neurodivergent people. Not a single facet of the human experience is untouched by Autism when one is discriminated against from birth, to school, to employment, to relationships, to private life.
This is the perfect book for anyone interested in humour, neurodivergence, class inequity, and raw human experience. I’m certain I’ll revisit this one in the future, anytime I’m starting to feel overwhelmed by my own Autistic troubles. I’m also certain that this book is now the first in a long stream of accounts and analyses of Autism in the literary world that I will be tearing my way through. Any recommendations, let me know!
Paige
