This autobiography begins with a foreword written by a PhD who directs an autism research center and an introduction written by a psychologist, also an expert in autism, both of which testify to the authenticity of the account that follows and to its uniqueness. It is a detailed verbal account of autism, a diagnosis that is often associated with limited communication. These introductory texts, which at once undermine and reinforce the voice of the autistic woman that follows, characterize the paradox of a written account of a condition that is for many significantly if not completely nonverbal as well as the paradox of the authority of experience that must also be verified by experts in the field.

Further complicating the authority of experience and the unity of self suggested by autobiography is Williams’s account of alternative personalities, which she relies on in challenging social situations. Culminating in a self-diagnosis that organizes experiences previously understood as “crazy” or “retarded,” Nobody Nowhere ultimately performs an autistic subjectivity, one that typically (with the notable exception of Temple Grandin’s writings) evades the self-narration that in Western humanism defines personhood. Nobody Nowhere defines Williams as an expert in autism both experientially as a woman with autism and non-experientially as someone with autism who is “high functioning” and thus capable of studying and writing on the subject. This complication of expertise and experience and the destabilization of the subject--not only through Williams’s development from practically nonverbal to highly verbal but also through her use of alternative personalities--make this a particularly good book to teach alongside other narratives of illness and disability.