Letters to My Weird Sisters by Joanne Limburg
“It seemed to me that many of the moments when my autism had … marked me out as different, were those moments when I had come up against some unspoken law about how a girl or a woman should be, and failed to meet it.”
When writer and poet Joanne Limburg received an autism diagnosis, aged 42, she inevitably spent time reflecting. As she tried to process a lifetime of difference, she felt, specifically, the weight of her self-perceived failure to perform girlhood and womanhood as others expected her to. This led Limburg to investigate other such women – her ‘weird sisters’ – who had been misunderstood, or even forgotten. And so came Letters to My Weird Sisters: four longform letters, probing and personal, each addressed to a ‘weird sister’ from history. Virginia Woolf, Adelheid Bloch, Frau V and Katharina Kepler all have different claims to the term ‘weird’; and each letter, too, is wide-ranging in subject matter. Limburg addresses complex topics such as ‘unmothering’, the ‘dishuman’, social death, institutionalisation and the ‘disability commons’. A fascinating blend of memoir, radical thought and haunting historical exploration, Limburg’s book feels original, intimate and quietly urgent.
I was immediately interested by her decision to write to these women, using – though sparingly – the fairly unusual second person perspective. It felt like an intentional honouring of their lives and the many struggles they faced: being spoken over, spoken for, or not spoken to at all. This is an experience many disabled people in modern Britain will sadly recognise, as we do our best to exist in a neoliberalist, austerity-oppressed society. As a fellow late-diagnosed autistic woman, I too feel Limburg’s obvious urge to make sense of our shared identity and community – past, present and future. I think marginalised people often experience that need to connect to the lost stories and rich histories of our communities; those stories are essential to our survival, both pulling us back and pushing us forward.
Reading Letters to My Weird Sisters has reminded me to hold on to this history, and to use it, as we tend to the solidarity and commonality that exists across time, across place and across circumstance for disabled people attempting to navigate a world not made for us. In the book’s opening paragraphs, Limburg emphasises the significance of discomfort. This is a book that may well confront, disarm and above all disrupt
commonly accepted narratives about disabled people. Right away, we are asked to consider the ugly ways human beings can respond when faced with something they cannot quickly identify, or process. We are reminded of how this can lead to the othering of disabled people. Of weird people. Limburg’s introduction feels apt, in that it immediately acknowledges the prejudice and discrimination disabled people face,
but it also sets a clear tone. This book will unsettle you. It should unsettle you.
I’m thinking now of a quote from the late autistic advocate, Mel Baggs: ‘Every person who could be described as an autistic child banging their head on the wall… is a hell of a lot more than that. It conjures a stereotype, a story. But it’s not a type of person. It’s more how others see us than how we are.’ So, how are we? And who are we? In Letters to My Weird Sisters, we may find part of the answer – though as Limburg acknowledges, it is ‘ultimately a very white and European list’. In publishing her letters to these women, Limburg grants us permission to look in on something that is unapologetically on her terms. I think this
is important to acknowledge, because it feels deliberate, and wonderfully defiant.
Again, there’s that intention to speak in the way she wants to; and perhaps in a way others before her have not been able to. Because, yes, this book is historical; it is academic, and meticulously researched; but it is also deeply personal. This is Limburg’s story as much as it is Woolf’s, Bloch’s, Frau V’s, and Kepler’s. However, alongside the personal comes a rallying cry for collective action and ‘shared resistance’. Limburg discusses ‘individualisation’ and ponders how we might free ourselves from ‘narrow silos of interest’ when it comes to fighting for disability rights. Individualisation can break down community and lead to that dangerous practise of othering, which allows us to view human beings as ‘a threat or a nuisance or an instrument or an object or your work or your responsibility or an interesting
spectacle, but not a person’. Here lies a tough question: what is the worst that can happen when we ‘other’ human beings?
To answer, Limburg takes us back in time to what is, for me, the most chilling, traumatising section of the book: the story of Adelheid Bloch. Bloch was a learning-disabled, Jewish woman who became one of the first people murdered in the Nazi gas chambers. At a time when disabled people were referred to as ‘useless eaters’ deserving only of ‘mercy death’, Bloch was diagnosed with ‘idiocy’ and deemed ‘unworthy of life’. That phrase has stayed with me long after I finished reading. Life unworthy of life. Language matters. I find it distressing, for example, to be referred to as someone who has autism, or someone with autism – as though my disability, my neurodivergent mind, is something I carry around with me; something I can pick up and put down; something that only affects me sometimes, or only affects me negatively; something that is understood only by how I present, rather than how I exist, think, feel and perceive; something that makes me somehow lesser than others, because I am laden with this burden, this distasteful add-on to the ‘normal’ human existence.
Language is power. The significance of language is a constant thread throughout the book. The title, for starters, with its brave, bold use of that word: weird. It is a word that so many disabled people will be used to hearing derogatively – me included. But I relish Limburg’s proud embracing of it; and I share her desire to reclaim. There is joy, release and power to be found here. A word that has hurt and harmed and hated
you, in your hands, becomes something different. And wasn’t it always about being different anyway?
I found it illuminating to read that the concept of normality was ‘invented’ by the Victorians, with the word ‘normal’ only entering the English language around 1840, along with – coincidentally, I’m sure – the introduction of machines, mass education, increased emphasis on workforce, the ‘standardising of time’ and the building of ‘idiot asylums’. To paraphrase Limburg, you cannot have the ‘normal’ without the ‘abnormal’. So, with mass primary education becoming compulsory, a ‘benchmark for normal cognitive development’ was needed, to ensure that pupils would ‘learn and develop at … the same rate’. In other words, if you were different, you were now a problem, threatening to disrupt the efficient, newly established norm. Limburg’s deconstruction of adulthood in the context of disability was also fascinating. Adulthood, she argues, is an ableist, heteronormative, racialised, classed and therefore constructed concept. It is a social position that ‘cannot be attained without the support and acknowledgement of others’; and therefore, it is ultimately a performance of individualism and independence – encouraged by neoliberal, Westernised thought. ‘Vulnerability and dependency, in a culture organised around the ideal of the independent self, are felt to be shameful conditions’, Limburg writes. Before I received my autism diagnosis, I felt indescribable shame about the person I was. A person I struggled desperately to make sense of, to explain away, to hide, disguise and punish myself for being. I will be working to undo that shame for a long time. Limburg’s analysis of the problematic organisation of our society has been helpful and healing for me in that regard.
But getting your head around this, along with other seismic suggestions in the book, is a pretty big ask. For some, it might be a eureka moment. But for others, I imagine it could feel utterly disorientating and overwhelming.
Letters to My Weird Sisters is a potentially transformative text. With that, inevitably, comes discomfort: the all-important term we were introduced to from the beginning. As Limburg writes, ‘I need to remind myself that not all difficult conversations can or should be avoided.’ I especially like the first part of that sentence: I need to remind myself. Therein lies the work. Because in those difficult conversations is the possibility to reimagine, to learn, and ultimately, to change. Limburg encourages readers to sit with their discomfort and examine it. She invites us in, rather than calls us out. The many inclusions of her own life experience help us to trust her with the vulnerability she asks of us. We know she is telling us her truth.
It is worth noting, though, that the chapters are densely written, and predominantly academic in nature. There is much to process. I think it is a book to read slowly, and to come back to – if you’re not averse to page folding – as I have done to write this review. It will undoubtedly be inaccessible to some readers – and perhaps the most important ones, given the subject matter. Limburg does go some way to address this,
citing her book as ‘just one small part’ of the work to be done, and that she hopes ‘someone with a different perspective will be able to build on the work … as I’ve been able to’. I like this idea of building when it comes to narratives on disability. To me, it signifies the creation of a new language – our language – building both on, and outside of, what exists now.
In Letters to My Weird Sisters, Limburg presents us with many opportunities to begin unravelling our ableism – whether internalised or otherwise – and address our privilege. She is honest about moments where she has had to do so herself – in the writing of this book, for example, when she felt conflicted about whether to include Bloch’s story, because her learning disability had been caused by brain damage. But Limburg challenged herself, as I believe we all should: who does it serve when we view disability as a hierarchy? Who does it serve when we include only one version of a story?
Disability is a gorgeous expanse of difference. This book honours that.
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