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The Reason I Jump
The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism (Japanese: 自閉症の僕が跳びはねる理由～会話のできない中学生がつづる内なる心～, Hepburn: Jiheishō no Boku ga Tobihaneru Riyū ~Kaiwa no Dekinai Chūgakusei ga Tsuzuru Uchinaru Kokoro~) is an autobiography by Naoki Higashida, a largely nonspeaking autistic person from Japan. It was first published in Japan in 2007. The English translation, by Keiko Yoshida and her husband, the English author David Mitchell, was published in 2013, with an introduction by the translators.
The book states that its author, Higashida, learned to communicate using an alphabet grid. There has been some controversy over his authorship.
The book became a New York Times bestseller and a Sunday Times bestseller for hardback nonfiction in the UK. It has been translated into over 30 other languages, and inspired a play from the National Theatre of Scotland and a feature documentary.
Higashida was diagnosed with autism when he was five years old, and has limited verbal communication skills. With help from his mother, he is purported to have written the book using a method he once described as "facilitated finger writing". This bears some resemblance to facilitated communication, a method which has been discredited as pseudoscience by organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, but Higashida is known to communicate with no physical support. Some researchers have questioned the authenticity of Higashida's writings, while others have studied them with interest.
The majority of the memoir is told through 58 questions Higashida and many other people dealing with autism are commonly asked, along with his answers. Interspersed are sections of short prose. These sections are either memories Higashida shares or parabolic stories that relate to the themes discussed throughout the memoir. The collection ends with Higashida's short story, "I'm Right Here", which the author prefaces by saying:
I wrote this story in the hope that it will help you to understand how painful it is when you can't express yourself to the people you love. If this story connects with your heart in some way, then I believe you'll be able to connect back to the hearts of people with autism too.
The English author David Mitchell and his wife, Keiko Yoshida, have a severely autistic son. They searched for books that might provide some "practical insight" to help them, saying that they had found academic texts and memoirs by adults with autism or by their family members, "but few were of much 'hands-on' help with our non-verbal, regularly distressed five-year-old". Yoshida, who is Japanese, ordered a copy of The Reason I Jump, which at the time was only available in Japanese. Initially, she translated parts of the book out loud for Mitchell at the kitchen table, and then they translated the book informally to give to their son's teachers and caregivers. Mitchell's agent and editor thought the book might have a wider audience. After receiving permission from Higashida, they created an English translation for publication.
Mitchell says the book was "a revelatory godsend" for him, providing both practical advice and leading him to think of their son having greater agency than he had previously thought, which helped their son. He found it helpful in two main ways: it provided some specific advice and information, and it shifted his attitude to one of treating his son—who, like Higashida, is unable to have conversations—as someone with "intelligence and imagination". This created a "virtuous spiral" in his son's and his own behavior. The book was subsequently translated into 34 other languages.
The Reason I Jump
The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism (Japanese: 自閉症の僕が跳びはねる理由～会話のできない中学生がつづる内なる心～, Hepburn: Jiheishō no Boku ga Tobihaneru Riyū ~Kaiwa no Dekinai Chūgakusei ga Tsuzuru Uchinaru Kokoro~) is an autobiography by Naoki Higashida, a largely nonspeaking autistic person from Japan. It was first published in Japan in 2007. The English translation, by Keiko Yoshida and her husband, the English author David Mitchell, was published in 2013, with an introduction by the translators.
The book states that its author, Higashida, learned to communicate using an alphabet grid. There has been some controversy over his authorship.
The book became a New York Times bestseller and a Sunday Times bestseller for hardback nonfiction in the UK. It has been translated into over 30 other languages, and inspired a play from the National Theatre of Scotland and a feature documentary.
Higashida was diagnosed with autism when he was five years old, and has limited verbal communication skills. With help from his mother, he is purported to have written the book using a method he once described as "facilitated finger writing". This bears some resemblance to facilitated communication, a method which has been discredited as pseudoscience by organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, but Higashida is known to communicate with no physical support. Some researchers have questioned the authenticity of Higashida's writings, while others have studied them with interest.
The majority of the memoir is told through 58 questions Higashida and many other people dealing with autism are commonly asked, along with his answers. Interspersed are sections of short prose. These sections are either memories Higashida shares or parabolic stories that relate to the themes discussed throughout the memoir. The collection ends with Higashida's short story, "I'm Right Here", which the author prefaces by saying:
I wrote this story in the hope that it will help you to understand how painful it is when you can't express yourself to the people you love. If this story connects with your heart in some way, then I believe you'll be able to connect back to the hearts of people with autism too.
The English author David Mitchell and his wife, Keiko Yoshida, have a severely autistic son. They searched for books that might provide some "practical insight" to help them, saying that they had found academic texts and memoirs by adults with autism or by their family members, "but few were of much 'hands-on' help with our non-verbal, regularly distressed five-year-old". Yoshida, who is Japanese, ordered a copy of The Reason I Jump, which at the time was only available in Japanese. Initially, she translated parts of the book out loud for Mitchell at the kitchen table, and then they translated the book informally to give to their son's teachers and caregivers. Mitchell's agent and editor thought the book might have a wider audience. After receiving permission from Higashida, they created an English translation for publication.
Mitchell says the book was "a revelatory godsend" for him, providing both practical advice and leading him to think of their son having greater agency than he had previously thought, which helped their son. He found it helpful in two main ways: it provided some specific advice and information, and it shifted his attitude to one of treating his son—who, like Higashida, is unable to have conversations—as someone with "intelligence and imagination". This created a "virtuous spiral" in his son's and his own behavior. The book was subsequently translated into 34 other languages.