Father of an eighteen-year-old autistic son, Gianluca Nicoletti is a prominent journalist who has spent years willing to put himself on the line to address questions about autism. The claim in his second book's title may catch you off guard, but reading it reveals its many layers and implications.
Nicoletti grapples with what every parent of a disabled child wrestles with in quiet terror: who will care for my son when I'm gone? How do we find—or build—a place that honors him fully, that loves him, that lets him grow and pushes him to express himself as best he can?
"Sometimes the hard part isn't becoming an adult. It's learning how to be a kid.
"Sometimes the hard part isn't becoming an adult. It's learning how to be a kid.The question cuts deep, and there's no denying the bitterness of a parent who spends his days fighting prejudice and red tape just so his son and others like him can access the basic opportunities that make a life worth living—both for them and for the people bound to them. Yet one senses a certain wariness, even preemptive suspicion, when it comes to existing institutions. Nicoletti's vision of Insettopia (an environment and way of life, both sheltered and integrated, where autistic and non-autistic people can realize their own life projects) is utopian, certainly—but that doesn't make it worth dismissing. Forgive me for straying from the author's own thinking, but it seems to me that Fede e Luce, from a different angle and in different contexts, has sometimes managed to do precisely this—and continues to do so. ===FINE===