A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole

Essayist Schembari shares her experience of neurodivergence in this affecting debut. In the narrative’s opening pages, a 34-year-old Schembari receives an autism diagnosis from her doctor, which she takes as confirmation that she “was not lazy or weird or deficient or annoying... or broken.” From there, Schembari flashes back to her childhood, recounting the difficulty she had connecting with her peers and her frequent clashes with teachers and school administrators. As she entered adulthood, Schembari adapted by “suppressing my natural instincts and replacing them with learned, often rehearsed, behaviors.” That strategy allowed her to blend in, even as it took a toll on her mental health. She fortifies lyrical descriptions of her own loneliness with rattling statistics—noting, for instance, that autistic people are nine times more like to die by suicide than their neurotypical peers. Such facts are galvanizing, but the memoir’s greatest strength lies in Schembari’s forceful prose and remarkable candor as she charts her path from self-hate to happiness. The results are stirring. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (Sept.)