Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Nobody Nowhere

The Remarkable Autobiography of an Autistic Girl

Donna Williams

Paperback: £12.95 / $18.95 add to cart

1998, 234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in, 192pp
ISBN: 978-1-85302-718-5, BIC 2: VFJD BG

Nobody Nowhere is the first instalment in Donna Williams' bestselling four part autobiography. At the age of four Donna is left in a wild, violent, obsessive and alcoholic atmosphere when one of her carers, her grandfather, dies and the other, her grandmother, is sent away. Now the seemingly deaf, somewhat 'psychotic' and disturbed Donna is put on course with the goal of transforming her into a pretty and perfect dancing doll.

But inside Donna there are other personalities she has collected along the way on her road to survival: Willie, who is like a civil rights activist on steroids, and the smiling facade of Carol, who plays the mother's doll to protect the soul of the real Donna. Intertwined with Willie's violent and defensive outbursts and paranoid protection, and Donna's often bizarre and quite autistic responses and behaviours, Carol, behaving like people on TV sit-coms, goes to school, even goes through the motions of 'friends', and develops a broad range of mimicked speech, stored phrases and caricatures, saving Donna from a life in an institution and often from the very real threat of death.

As the teenage years approach Carol and Willie fight it out for control of Donna's body, with the real Donna on the sidelines, as the lot of them drift into homelessness, poverty and domestic prostitution, passing from stranger to stranger. After a failed suicide attempt she falls into the care of a psychiatrist and goes on to get a university education. But knowledge is not wisdom and without independence skills, Donna follows a stranger across the ocean where, on arrival, he abandons her to an itinerant 'bag lady' existence throughout Europe.

This second journey begins with a man who will change her life and sense of self forever as she meets and falls in love with a real life 'mirror', a man facing the same challenges. Later faced with the loss of this first deep love, Donna goes on a desperate and dangerous quest to find out 'what kind of mad' she is in the hope that she can change it. As a result, she finds out she is autistic, a realization that ends up changing the entire field of developmental disabilities forever.

An international bestseller, translated into over 20 languages throughout the world, Nobody Nowhere is a moving, gripping, surreal, myth-shattering, sometimes hilarious but ultimately uplifting book and one that will stay with you as one of the most moving and exceptional works you will ever read. Life, 'normality' and 'reality' will not be the same again.