Rare Good: Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment (American Lives)

Now I saw that I was more than who I thought I was―more than who I had been told I was. There wasn’t anything the diagnosis didn’t touch. In time, even how I thought about being a writer changed. Steve Edwards was diagnosed with autism in his mid-thirties, altering his relationship to writing and family. He discovered what he had always known but never said: His compulsion to create was more than just a pursuit of self-expression. Faced with a mix of belief and disbelief from those who knew him, and full of questions himself, he committed to a new sense of wonder and pursuit of revelation. Rare Good offers insights into Edwards’s experience of the awe that only art, disability, and loved ones can bring. Raising a disabled child and delving into acknowledging his own mindedness, he explores the struggles of communicating and finding care, the joy of gathering as community, and the astonishing gifts that art and education offer us, especially when we acknowledge the contributions of disabled artists past and present. Drawing on times of heartbreak transformed into determination, Edwards describes his ongoing desire to find a way together.