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A gentle and beautifully written debut novel about communication and human connection, and what it feels like for those with non-speaking autism to live in a world that, more often than not, ignores them entirely.
The novel is set in Upward Bound, a day care facility for the disabled. Walter, our narrator, describes it as an “insane asylum that passes itself off as a daycare for autistic adults”. The clients or "inmates" as Walter refers to them - including gentle giant Jorge, handsome Tom, quiet mouse-like Emma, and our narrator Walter - are mostly non-speaking autistic adults.
For Walter, autism on his end of the spectrum is like “ADHD times a thousand.....It’s like sitting in front of a bank of monitors that are all showing different events, and all are playing at top volume.” Unlike some of the others, Walter has always had a champion in his mom who was unwilling to give up on his education or his potential to communicate. When Walter is three years old, she comes across a feature on 60 Minutes about an Indian mom who taught her non-speaking autistic son to type. Walter meets Soma soon after, and is slowly taught to point at letters on a laminated typing board to form words and sentences. This method requires a trained physical aide to hold up the QWERTY board for the autistic person to point at, and, equally important, to keep them focused on the task at hand. With a trained aide, Walter manages to graduate high school. He goes on to get a degree from community college, with his mom as his aide. Shortly after, tragedy strikes, and his mom needs to go back to work. Despite having successfully navigated high school and college, there is no path ahead for Walter. Not without a full-time aide which they cannot afford. Non-speakers like him cannot get any jobs, even menial ones. And hence his relegation to daycare at Upward Bound.
Upward Bound is run by Dave, whose ambition to become an actor has fizzled and he now spends his days as centre director, overseeing the various pointless and “infantilizing” activities for the clients, enforcing his silly rules, and writing up incident reports when a client goes off the rails - especially Jorge the “eloper” who will make a break for it the second the staff turn their attention from him. Dave’s staff is made up of mostly transitional employees whose training and focus is limited to the safety of the clients and shepherding them from one activity to another. No one stays long, the job is hard, and an equally low paying gig at MacDonald’s seems more appealing. The one exception is Carlos - a product of a difficult childhood himself - who seems to have found a sense of purpose at Upward Bound. Carlos brings a sense of calm to the proceedings and genuinely cares, especially for Jorge with whom he forms a special bond.
The narrative dips into different perspectives, from the first person account of Walter to the third person narratives of some of the others, including Ann, who spends a summer at Upward Bound before heading off to college, and Avery, the checkout girl at the local Target that this motley crew from Upward Bound visits every Friday morning to roam the aisles.
This is a heartbreaking, poignant, and life-affirming story that will open up your heart and mind and teach you a thing or two about how neurotypical people might better see and understand those who are built differently.
The author Woody Brown became the first nonspeaking autistic graduate of UCLA in 2022, where he received the English department’s top writing honors. Brown completed his MFA in creative writing at Columbia University in 2024.