Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

Content warnings:
This book contains discussions of the social and the medical models of disability, and real life examples of stigma and prejudice to autistic adults and children. This includes from medical and educational professionals, and medical neglect. There are detailed flashbacks of autism assessments which may cause some people discomfort.

I Will Die On This Hill by Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards is not a book just for parents. That probably seems like an odd statement considering its subtitle is “Autistic Adults, Autism Parents, and the Children Who Deserve a Better World”. It is definitely aimed at the two groups mentioned there; autistic adults and autism parents, and the two authors offer their very candid perspectives from each side of that “hill”. For me, as someone who has multiple friends and associates who are neurodivergent this has been the first book that I’ve read on the subject that was properly informative about the autistic community.

The aim of I Will Die On This Hill is to bridge the communication gap between autistic adults and autism parents. As Meghan explains getting a diagnosis of autism for her children was difficult and met with a lot of stigma. When she finally did get a diagnosis the only information that she received from medical professionals was to correct her child’s behaviour. That seemed odd to Meghan as someone who advocated for developmentally appropriate practices for children, and so she started to look for more information about autism online. She goes into detail about her journey and how she found a community of other autism parents, but it was only when Jules started commenting on her blog that she became aware of autistic adults.

As Jules and Meghan discuss throughout I Will Die On This Hill, there is a large community of autistic adults, many of which who want to help allistic (non-autistic) parents of autistic children understand autism better. Autistic adults were once autistic children; they’ve been there and want to help the next generation. The problem is that parents also want to help their children, and it can be difficult for them to hear someone else talking like an expert about their children. There are other difficulties and conflicts which Jules and Meghan discuss, along with guests who have contributed short essays that have been placed between chapters.

The level of detail that these two authors have gone into is absolutely amazing, and as they are writing from the position of a parent who knows nothing at all about autism they have built the knowledge in I this book from the ground up. It’s a great introduction to autism and the autistic community from two very different and very important perspectives, and has a fantastic amount of resources spread throughout for further reading. Between the two of them, Jules and Meghan have covered so much. This includes racism as Jules is Indigenous and Meghan has Black and Brown children, and the afterword is written by a queer person, Jillian Nelson.

I appreciated how diverse the information was as prior to reading I Will Die On This Hill I was completely unaware that “autism awareness” was linked to organisations who have harmful agendas and believe that autism needs to be cured. Instead, it is important to make the distinction to say “autism acceptance” as that is what the autism community strives for; to be accepted for who they are.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about autism and the autism community, especially if you are a parent or someone who has children in your life. Whether you are a parent or relative of autistic children if you are around children you will meet autistic children, and it’s important that you know more about autism, so you can talk to your children about autism too. Be part of autism acceptance, not stigma!

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