Book Review: Invisible Differences by Julie Danchez

Title: Invisible Differences

Author: Julie Danchez

Genre: Graphic Novels

Number of Pages: 197

Rating: F

Recommended?: No

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Good God, this book was a mess. What really sucked was that my parents gave me this for Christmas, but as soon as I finished it I put in in the Goodwill bin. It was that bad. Invisible Differences is a graphic novel about a young woman finding out she has Asperger’s Syndrome and learning to advocate for herself, but the execution was so stilted and didactic that it made me cringe.

Most of the book consists of neurotypical people being cartoonishly awful to the main character (this book is allegedly a true story, but I have no doubt it’s heavily fictionalized.) There is no subtlety whatsoever, they basically call her retarded to her face and make fun of her for saying she’s on the autistic spectrum when ‘real’ autistic people ‘bang their heads against the wall and eat worms and stuff.’ Eat worms? Yeah, someone actually says that. This book seems to seek to be informational rather than an interesting narrative, but reading this hackneyed book is akin to having your teeth pulled without an anesthetic.