Guest column: Autism Awareness Month

In honor of April being Autism Awareness Month, I have decided to review three books, all dealing with characters affected by some form of autism spectrum disorder.

I began researching and studying autism and other developmental disorders in my mid-teens and was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism, at age 20.

I hope these reviews offer a glimpse of what life is like for those of us on the spectrum and help Indiana Daily Student readers keep an open mind in regard to autism and other disabilities.

Keep reading the IDS for the next installment of the book reviews.

‘Born on a Blue Day’ by Daniel Tammet

In your mind, the number five is yellow with blue dots, short and stubby. Six is a bright fluorescent orange with black specks like pepper, and seven is light purple, the color of Easter egg dye and tall and slender.

You are in grade school, and you have a great deal of difficulty making friends. According to your teachers, you are very bright but odd. You sit alone in a corner of the playground counting stones.

This is the world that British author Daniel Tammet brings to light in his memoir, “Born on a Blue Day,” a world of growing up with savant syndrome, an extremely rare autism spectrum disorder perhaps most notably depicted in Dustin Hoffman’s 1988 Oscar-winning film, “Rain Man.”

In the book, Tammet describes his experience with synesthesia, a rare neurological condition in which individuals experience emotion, color and shape in conjunction with words, letters and numbers.

Tammet, like Hoffman’s character, Raymond Babbitt, is extremely gifted with numbers, so much so that in 2004, he set a European record for reciting pi out to more than 22,000 decimal places.

However, unlike Babbitt, Tammet is able to communicate with others and live independently.

Twenty-eight at the time of the book’s publication in 2006, Tammet describes his life from birth to present day — how he entered school, negotiated adolescence, traveled out of the country for the first time and at last found a life partner.

“Born on a Blue Day” is, in a way, similar to other autobiographies in that it tells someone’s life story, but this is a story people rarely hear.

In that, it prompts readers to question the capabilities not only of the minds of those on the autism spectrum, but the minds of humanity as a whole.