The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
Naoki Higashida, 2007 (Eng. transl. 2013, David Mitchell, KA Yoshida)
Random House
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812994865
Summary
You’ve never read a book like The Reason I Jump.
Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, it is a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one at last have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.
Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. Questions such as: “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?” “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?” “Why don’t you make eye contact when you’re talking?” and “What’s the reason you jump?” (Naoki’s answer: “When I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky.”)
With disarming honesty and a generous heart, Naoki shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself. His insights—into the mystery of words, the wonders of laughter, and the elusiveness of memory—are so startling, so strange, and so powerful that you will never look at the world the same way again.
In his introduction, bestselling novelist David Mitchell writes that Naoki’s words allowed him to feel, for the first time, as if his own autistic child was explaining what was happening in his mind. “It is no exaggeration to say that The Reason I Jump allowed me to round a corner in our relationship.”
This translation was a labor of love by David and his wife, KA Yoshida, so they’d be able to share that feeling with friends, the wider autism community, and beyond. Naoki’s book, in its beauty, truthfulness, and simplicity, is a gift to be shared. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Naoki Higashida
Naoki Higashida was born in 1992 and was diagnosed with autism at the age of five. He graduated from high school in 2011 and lives in Kimitsu, Japan. He is an advocate, motivational speaker, and the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction. (From the publisher.)
David Mitchell
• Birth—January 12, 1969
• Where—Southport, Lancashire, UK
• Education—B.A., M.A., University of Kent
• Awards—John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
• Currently—lives in County Cork, Ireland
David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist. He has written five novels, two of which, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has lived in Italy, Japan and Ireland.
Mitchell was born in Southport in Merseyside, England, and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire. He was educated at Hanley Castle High School and at the University of Kent, where he obtained a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.
Mitchell lived in Sicily for a year, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England, where he could live on his earnings as a writer and support his then pregnant wife.
Works
Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. The novel won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.
His next novels were Black Swan Green (2006) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), which the Boston Globe called a "masterpiece" and which prompted Dave Eggers to refer to Mitchell, in a New York Times review, as "as one of the more fascinating and fearless writers alive.”
In 2013, he and his wife Keiko Yoshida translated into English a book written by an autistic 13-year-old Japanese boy. The Reason I Jump became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2012 his novel Cloud Atlas was made into a film. In recent years he has also written opera libretti. Wake, based on the 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster and with music by Klaas de Vries, was performed by the Dutch National Reisopera in 2010. He has also finished another opera, Sunken Garden, with the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa, to be premiered in 2013 by the English National Opera.
Personal life
After another stint in Japan, Mitchell currently lives with his wife Keiko Yoshida and their two children in Clonakilty in County Cork, Ireland. One of their children is autistic.
In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote:
I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last 6 years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself.
Mitchell has the speech disorder of stammering and considers the film The King's Speech (2010) to be one of the most accurate portrayals of what it's like to be a stammerer: "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old." Mitchell is also a patron of the British Stammering Association. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/16/2013.)
Book Reviews
The Reason I Jump may raise questions, as many books have, about the nature of autism. But it raises questions about translation as well. [David Mitchell's] translation, at its best, is a dance between an objective search for equivalent language and an intuitive grasp of the author’s intent, which may have nothing to do with the translator’s point of view. The parents of an autistic child may not be the best translators for a book by an autistic child.
Sallie Tisdale - New York Times
Please don’t assume that The Reason I Jump is just another book for the crowded autism shelf.... This is an intimate book, one that brings readers right into an autistic mind—what it’s like without boundaries of time, why cues and prompts are necessary, and why it’s so impossible to hold someone else’s hand. Of course, there’s a wide range of behavior here; that’s why "on the spectrum" has become such a popular phrase. But by listening to this voice, we can understand its echoes.
Chicago Tribune
Astonishing. The Reason I Jump builds one of the strongest bridges yet constructed between the world of autism and the neurotypical world.... There are many more questions I’d like to ask Naoki, but the first words I’d say to him are "thank you."
Sunday Times (UK)
This is a guide to what it feels like to be autistic... In Mitchell and Yoshida’s translation, [Higashida] comes across as a thoughtful writer with a lucid simplicity that is both childlike and lyrical.... Higashida is living proof of something we should all remember: in every autistic child, however cut off and distant they may outwardly seem, there resides a warm, beating heart.
Financial Times (UK)
Higashida’s child’s-eye view of autism is as much a winsome work of the imagination as it is a user’s manual for parents, carers and teachers.... This book gives us autism from the inside, as we have never seen it.... [Higashida] offers readers eloquent access into an almost entirely unknown world.
Independent (UK)
Like millions of parents confronted with autism, Mitchell and his wife found themselves searching for answers and finding few that were satisfactory. Help, when it arrived, came not from some body of research but from the writings of a Japanese schoolboy, Naoki Higashida. The Reason I Jump...is a book that acts like a door to another logic, explaining why an autistic child might flap his hands in front of his face, disappear suddenly from home—or jump.
Telegraph (UK)
This is a wonderful book. I defy anyone not to be captivated, charmed and uplifted by it.
Evening Standard London
Whether or not you have experienced raising a child who is autistic...this little book, which packs immeasurable honesty and truth into its pages, will simply detonate any illusions, assumptions, and conclusions you've made about the condition.... What Higashida has done by communicating his reality is to offer carers a way forward and offer teachers new ways of working with the children, and thus opening up and expanding the possibilities for autistic kids to feel less alone. All that in less than 200 pages? What an accomplishment.
Herald Dublin
The Reason I Jump is an enlightening, touching and heart-wrenching read. Naoki asks for our patience and compassion—after reading his words, it’s impossible to deny that request.
Yorkshire Post (UK)
Every page dismantles another preconception about autism.... Once you understand how Higashida managed to write this book, you lose your heart to him.
New Statesman (UK)
A rare road map into the world of severe autism...[Higashida’s] insights...unquestionably give those of us whose children have autism just a little more patience, allowing us to recognize the beauty in ‘odd’ behaviors where perhaps we saw none.
People
Just thirteen years old, effectively unable to speak, Higashida used a special alphabet grid to compose this slim, informative book, which provides an unprecedented look into the mind of a young person with autism.... Higashida gallantly attempts to explain why he and others with autism do the things they do.... Surely one of the most remarkable books yet to be featured in these pages.
Publishers Weekly
In addition to demystifying his condition and translating his experience, the author intersperses some short fables and a concluding short story that shows remarkable empathy and imagination, as the death of an autistic boy leaves a family transformed. "[Higashida] says that he aspires to be a writer, but it's obvious to me that he already is one," writes Mitchell. Anyone struggling to understand autism will be grateful for the book and translation.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to get a discussion started for The Reason I Jump:
1. What new insights have you gained by reading Naoki Higashida's book? What surprised you most about his depiction of what it is like to be autistic?
2. David Mitchell says that the problems of socialization and communication people with autism display "are not symptoms of autism but consequences." What does he mean exactly...what is the difference as Mitchell sees it?
3. Talk about Naoki's statement that autism may be a result of our civilization's growing disconnect with nature:
I think that people with autism are born outside the regime of civilisation… [in which] a deep sense of crisis exists… Autism has somehow arisen out of this… if, by our being here, we could help the people of the world remember what truly matters for the Earth, that would give us a quiet pleasure.
What do you think of that assessment? Is there any truth in what Naoki says?
4. Talk about the way in which Naoki believes that he and others with autism feel a sense of guilt: "The hardest ordeal for us is the idea that we are causing grief for other people." What would you say (or have you said) to Naoki or any other individual with autism.
5. Naoki indicates that language, which the rest of us use to communicate feelings, actually get in the way of feelings: that language is simply incapable of conveying our astonishment at the world. Have you ever felt the inadequacy of words to describe your own experiences?
6. Do you know someone, a friend or a member of your own family, with autism? If so, how true does this book ring for you?
7. What is the state of treatment and/or understanding of autism today? What do we (society and the medical profession) need to learn about autism? Does this book help? Will it make a difference?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)