Postcards from Autism (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781639806706)

This collection beautifully describes the years Eileen Coughlin and her adopted, autistic daughter had together into early adulthood. Parents of other adopted children wondered about the probability of success of what they deemed an imperfect parental pairing. Yet Coughlin writes, "But oh, the miracle of this match." In this marvelous collection, she imparts to the reader a challenging yet loving life. It is not to be missed!

-Mary Anna Scenga Kruch for The Awakenings Review

From beginning to end, Postcards from Autism has me under its spell. Eileen Coughlin's poems are full of wisdom, wit and lyricism. They document the poet's adoption of a baby in Jiujiang, China, and the life-affirming love that grows between mother and daughter. There are typical struggles, but beyond that, we enter the girl's autistic world, a world of haunting beauty and paralyzing fear. Coughlin tells us, "This devotion has no room for the depth / of despair, only determination." Interspersed among more traditional poems are the "postcards" from vacation spots. They highlight the disparities between the daughter's enhanced sensitivity and the mother's more "normal" or traditional response to the world. Not only is this a courageous book, it is finely-tuned poetry from a skilled storyteller.

-Linda Neal, author of Dodge and Burn and Not About Dinosaurs

Eileen Coughlin's Postcards from Autism reveals the power and patterns, the missteps and misgivings, the love and the loneliness at the heart of a mother-daughter relationship. Through poems as filled with grief as joy, this collection moves through all that time brings between two people bound up by family, raising questions of who saves whom, who needs saving, what obligations does motherhood bring, and how can we-any of us!-stand the test of those obligations. Coughlin is adept at changing registers, from funny to serious, dark to light, formal to informal. This is a beautiful and challenging book, a travelogue of the heart.

-Scott Korb, Director, MFA in Writing, Pacific University

Author: Eileen Coughlin
ISBN-10: 1639806709
ISBN-13: 9781639806706
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Language: English
Published: 01/17/2025
Pages: 96
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.31lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.23d