A radical and very interesting book on Autism and in particular radical autistic self love and self care. This book explores the necessities of unmasking in order to uncover your real self and stop working yourself to the bone for an ableist society.
As the title suggests this book is particularly helpful for masked autistics, who no longer want to bear the strain it takes to appear normal and who want to figure out a way to unmask. The book offers helpful tools to do so while maintaining and increasing self esteem as masking is often a survival tool learned in childhood. It combines worksheets with interviews of other autistic experiences, the author's personal experience and his research as a scholar and blends it all wonderfully.
I particularly enjoyed the part about realizing family members have been masked and undiagnosed neurodiverse, as someone who has multiple adult neurodivergent (including autism and adhd) diagnoses in my close family and is questioning myself. It just felt very true and relateable.
I also enjoyed that I was able to snag an audiobook read by the author himself, which increased my enjoyment of the sometimes sarcastic scenes a lot.
All in all this is a very good book if you want to read about intersectional autism with a heavy focus on the US, exploring the difficulties for people that went undiagnosed since they are not white nonverbal middleclass to rich boys.