The following stems from my recent reading of Stuart Murray's Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination

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There has been an incredible increase in contemporary narratives dealing with autism, but despite the books, articles, movies and television shows, there is still very little understanding about what it means to be autistic.Fictional works with autistic characters, have become common (especially in the past 20 years), but by and far, most of the published material is written by and for parents and other care givers with a focus on diagnosis, treatment, and the effect on the family.In both fiction and non-fiction, the autistic usually appears as what Murray terms the 'sentimental savant', existing to enrich the lives of the non-autistic majority and aid in 'the construction of normalcy'.