Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism by Dawn Prince-Hughes
reviewed by Cathy Belben
from Entertainment News Northwest May 2004
Anyone with pets knows that they can be a great source of comfort and joy, and many scientific studies have affirmed what dog and cat owners experience every day: animals are good for our health—they make us laugh, they take us for walks, and they curl up with us when we’re lonely. Most animal lovers are enriching their lives with help from Fifi the French poodle or their grey mouse-hunting feline, Trout, however, not from enormous 350 pound primates.
WWU anthropology professor Dawn Prince-Hughes has had a much different animals-as-helpers-and-friends experience. Prince-Hughes struggled throughout her life to make connections with people, process stimuli, and maintain a “normal” emotional equilibrium. She found relief from her difficulties by connecting with the gorilla population at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. In her memoir, Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, she describes how her condition plagued her until she found comfort and friendship observing and interacting with the gorillas, and how she was later diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome—a form of autism—and began learning skills to cope with its symptoms.
“One might ask,” writes Prince-Hughes in her memoir, “How an autistic person could possibly go undiagnosed until adulthood.” Her question touches upon a common misconception about the disorder: that autistic individuals are withdrawn, uncommunicative, and unable to connect with people. In her book, Prince-Hughes does an admirable job of correcting this misconception. People with Asperger’s Syndrome are different than “classic” autistics, she notes. They don’t demonstrate delayed language development, and they display normal cognitive and physical development. They do have some of the typically recognized autistic tendencies: difficulty making social connections and communicating effectively, perseverative behaviors, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, prodigious long-term memories, and sometimes, bouts of rage. The disorder wasn’t clinically defined until 1994, making an explanation for the behavior of people like Prince-Hughes even more unlikely. It wasn’t until she’d dropped out of school, experienced homelessness, and nearly drove her life partner away that Prince-Hughes sought an official diagnosis of Asperger’s to explain her struggles.
Before her diagnosis, Prince-Hughes spent decades besieged by the effects of her autism, and in her book, she chronicles these desperately lonely years. Unable to connect with peers and teachers, she dropped out of high school and couch-surfed from one friend’s place to another’s, eating hand-me-down food (she once ate a can of kidney beans using a comb because she had no utensils) and numbing her pain with alcohol and drugs. Her life changed when she began spending time at the gorilla exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo. “The first day I went to the zoo,” she writes, “I felt suddenly liberated. This may sound strange to people accustomed to making active choices, but I had lived my life up to that point utterly unaware that I could choose a course of action and allow that choice to nurture me.”
As she spent time observing the gorillas, Prince-Hughes noticed similarities between them and herself—hiding and ritualistic behavior, for example—and she learned from their interactions how she could form more significant bonds with, and behave more appropriately toward, the people in her life. “Very cautiously, I tried to apply the things I’d learned from the gorillas in social situations,” she says. For example, “I tried to put people at ease by acknowledging them with quick sideways glances and smiles—which evolved from submissive primate grimaces and are intended to convey that no harm is meant.” Throughout the memoir, Prince-Hughes shows again and again how she connected with the gorillas, and what they taught her about forming relationships. She also creates a thoughtful, compassionate portrait of the gorillas, who are often misunderstood and mistreated, and encourages readers to act on information she provides to help organizations seeking to create better lives for the apes.
Animal lovers will appreciate Prince-Hughes’ stories of the gorillas she befriended in Seattle, and all readers will be fascinated by her account of life with autism and her ability to confront her challenges and use what she learned from the gorillas to improve her social interactions and her life in general. Dawn Prince-Hughes learned how to build a fulfilling life with autism, and Songs of the Gorilla Nation offers readers reason to believe that others who have the condition will also find healing, possibly through positive interactions with animals. “Autism is a way of sensing the world,” she writes. “It is my hope that as more autistic people find places to learn about themselves and grow, they will find ways to share their special talents with the world.” Perhaps these people—and those who love them—can start that learning with this story of hope.
Cathy Belben is a local reader, writer and high school librarian.