Communicate with Me | Savarese

Last year Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN wanted to talk to me so much that he flew me to New York and got me a room at the fanciest hotel in the city, but ironically at my school, most kids choose not to talk to me at all. Why is that? Recently I surveyed some of my close friends and discovered that most people aren't sure how to talk freely to me, and I greatly decided to use their questions as the basis for this piece.  

Ralph James Savarese | essayist, poet, scholar, and activist

Ralph James Savarese is the author of Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption (Other Press 2007), which Newsweek called a “real life love story and a passionate manifesto for the rights of people with neurological disabilities.” It won the Independent Publishers Gold Medal in the category of health/medicine/nutrition, and a chapter was selected as a “notable essay” in the Best American Essays series of 2004.    

Planet of the Blind: D.J. Savarese, My Friend, Our Ally in Disability Rights

I am a lucky man. Although I bear the emotional scars of a tough childhood—a disability childhood, one with bullying, cruel teachers, lots of loneliness—I have had the startling fortune to meet magnificent people throughout my life.  

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