I had the pleasure of meeting John last fall when he was in Toronto to address an Autism Speaks Canada conference — an amazing funding and advocacy organization for individuals and families who struggle with autism spectrum disorders. John brought a wealth of knowledge and insight to a room full of experts based on his own experience growing up with Aspergers – generally defined as the high-functioning end of the spectrum – before the diagnoses even existed.
John let his editors at Doubleday Canada and I take him out for a drink while he was in town and talk about his then upcoming memoir Be Different: Adventures of a Free Range Aspergian.
“I love Canada!” John insisted I know as soon as I picked him up at his hotel. Apparently some of those adventures included riding his motorcycle across Canada and traveling the country widely with the Canadian band April Wine.
John is a great storyteller. Hearing how he didn’t fit in at school or with other kids growing up, and finally learned to focus on all the things he DID excel at are important lessons for us all. John went on to be a successful in work and in life BECAUSE of his autism, not in spite of it. John tells a touching story from the book in this online slideshow when he related to an undiagnosed autistic child in a documentary, and first realized that when he draws on his own experience, at times he can recognize and explain a child’s behavior better than a professional therapist.
John’s first memoir Look Me In The Eye was a big bestseller. This literary instinct seems to run in his family — his brother, Augusten Burroughs, wrote about some of their dysfunctional childhood in his bestseller, Running with Scissors. His mother, Margaret Robinson, will publish a memoir in May called The Long Journey Home.
John has given a voice and visibility to everyone living on the spectrum, encourage them to embrace the ways in which they stand out. John certainly does, and If you are in Toronto, I hope you will come to the ROM tonight and be entertained yourself by his trademark dry wit and humour.