The Autism Relationships Handbook

The Autism Relationships Handbook is a book about how to have social relationships and treat other people with good character.

It's published by Microcosm, an indie publisher that puts out a lot of cool, radical (in a good way) books and zines that bring focus to marginalized voices.

It's written by Joe Biel, an autistic publisher and author, and Dr. Faith G. Harper, a non-autistic psychologist who wrote the Unfuck Your Brain (and Unfuck [A Lot of Other Things]) series of books.

This book primarily explains different kinds of social relationships and some rules of thumb for how to treat others with respect. It emphasizes communicating about what feels comfortable and mutually agreeable to both parties.

Some parts may feel obvious to some readers, but for anyone who would like a more explicit guidebook on social relationships (without encouraging you to mask), this is a thorough, compassionate, easy-to-read option.

There's some pretty solid advice in here on living by your values and dealing with people, helpfully detailing how the same action might be interpreted differently in different social contexts. They also rewrote the criteria for autism from an autism-affirming (and quite entertaining) lens and include references to queer relationships as well.

To keep it interesting, Joe also sprinkles in some anecdotes about Joe's own past social faux pas and learning experiences. My only caveat is that there's some slightly generalized language in the book in places, so just keep in mind that we're all different and your mileage may vary.

From Dr. Harper's other tomes, you might correctly surmise that the tone of this book is in a similar vein. It's pretty amusingly written; my favorite tongue-in-cheek bit is when they describe neurotypical traits as "the allistic disability." Riffing on how many autistic traits are unfairly pathologized, this book gives neurotypical social norms a taste of their own medicine. When I first found out I was autistic, this joke gave me some comforting perspective, along with making me laugh a lot ;)

If you like the advice and enjoyable profanity in this book, the same authors wrote another one called The Autism Partner Handbook. Check it out if you're interested!