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Hardcover Book Details
  • 9781633937444 1633937445
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Twilah Hiari
Author
Regression
Twilah Hiari, author
Follow the journey of Twilah Hiari, an autistic woman who reached out in desperation to the medical establishment for help. Twilah reveals the devastating consequences she suffered when therapists and physicians failed to acknowledge her childhood trauma, autistic behaviors, and immunological dysfunction years before autism became a commonplace diagnosis, and decades before the medical conditions she lives with entered the medical literature. In the process Twilah discovered the system was sicker than the patient. While her experience was a pivotal force for post-traumatic growth, Twilah's injuries also revealed several of the mechanisms that make regressive autism the reality that surrounds us today. The doctrine of purely genetic neurodiversity is no longer tenable in the face of new scientific findings. Regression is a key narrative in ushering out erroneous ideas that autism is a condition that exists and persists independent from environmental and medical factors. It addresses the lies we create and perpetuate as individuals, professionals, and institutions in the face of things we witness but do not understand, or do not wish to accept. Ultimately, Regression is a story of perseverance and hope, reminding us that it's possible to face incredible adversity and come out a survivor.
Plot/Idea: 8 out of 10
Originality: 9 out of 10
Prose: 9 out of 10
Character/Execution: 8 out of 10
Overall: 8.50 out of 10

Assessment:

Idea/Concept: Twilah Hiari's Regression explores, via a clever and twisty question-and-answer structure, the author's harrowing experiences with indifferent medical personnel, misdiagnoses, medicinal side effects, and institutionalization. The story is urgent, and the structural conceit original.

Prose: Line to line, Hiari is a strong stylist and incisive observer capable of stirring strong emotional responses from readers. While the story is often anguished, the prose is sharp, memorable, and often mordantly witty. That said, the repetitive nature of the narrative reduces the prose's freshness as the pages pass.

Originality: Hiari's story is an important, of-the-moment cry for greater empathy and understanding for patients whose chronic symptoms are not easily diagnosed. She recounts in vivid detail her misadventures over decades with a battalion of medical professionals who failed to diagnose, among other things, her apparent autism, sometimes treating her as a problem patient or a grifter eager to score meds or file malpractice suits. Hiari writes upsetting accounts of doctors' disinterest and hostility and ties the narrative together with the inventive device of question-and-answer sessions from what readers assume, at first, is an especially engaged therapist.

Execution: Despite its sharp prose and memorable detail, Hiari's story is by its very nature repetitive -- this is an account of cyclical suffering. The book covers similar situations again and again, often in protracted scenes, steeping readers at length in miseries that sometimes -- especially in the book's second half -- could be summarized rather than dramatized.

Date Submitted: October 09, 2019

Formats
Hardcover Book Details
  • 9781633937444 1633937445
  • pages
  • $
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