The Reason I Jump

The Basics:

Title: The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old-Boy With Autism

Author: Naoki Higashida

Translation: David Mitchell and KA Yoshida

Introduction: David Mitchell

Publisher: Random House (2013)

Pages: 176 (Hardcover)

The Overview:

Naoki Higashida was a thirteen-year-old year old boy when he wrote this book. As a Japanese teenager who suffers from Autism, he has severe difficulties expressing himself. However, he and his caretakers developed a system through which Naoki could use letter charts to spell out words. In this way, the young man was able to communicate with unprecedented clarity. He wrote a startling and eye-opening book that frankly looks at the differences between people who fall on the autism spectrum and those who do not. More amazingly, the book is peppered with non-fiction short stories that encapsulate an incredible range of emotion. 

Japanese-born KA Yoshida and English author David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) have an autistic son with communication and behavioral difficulties. When KA stumbled upon The Reason I Jump in its original Japanese, she and her husband were so moved and encouraged by it that they arranged to develop an English translation, which is what I have just read.

Why I Read It:

There was an incredible amount of hype around this book (for good reason), particularly in "parenting" circles. I have also known many autistic children, mostly children and siblings of friends, and I was interested to see what insight this book contained. 

Why You Should Read It:

It is, simply, mind-blowing. Most of the book is arranged in a question-and-answer format, with Naoki posing common questions or misconceptions about autistic children to himself and then proceeding to answer and clarify. Some of his insights are precise; others are vague and theoretical. All of them are fascinating, sad, and eye-opening. 

The parts that blew me away and made me cry constantly were the short stories inserted throughout. We tend to think of autistic people as detached from normal emotional processes and perhaps unaware of others' emotional reactions. Naoki blows this misconception out of the water with his fiction. He is clearly acutely aware of what emotions his words and feelings might unleash, and he is a hell of a writer. It is very difficult for me to describe how amazed I was while I read this book, and all I can do is recommend it is the strongest terms to anyone who is interested in autism or in having their world view altered.