UNAPOLOGETICALLY WHOLE

Dada-Olley presents a memoir about the challenges and triumphs of taking care of family members with autism.

The book opens with the author delivering a speech in 2019 at a Dallas playground designed for both disabled and able-bodied children. In the brief address, she draws on her three decades of experiences as a Nigerian American attorney and advocate who has spent much of her life in service to others. Dada-Olley grew up as the eldest daughter of Nigerian immigrants in suburban Chicago, taking on caregiving responsibilities for her brother Kunle, who was diagnosed with autism and an intellectual disability in the 1980s. At the same time, she navigated family instability, racial discrimination as a member of a Black family in a predominantly white suburb, and the high expectations often placed on firstborn daughters in immigrant households. Her caregiving would continue in a new form when, years later, both of her own children, Fela and Alero, were diagnosed with autism in consecutive years; her family first dealt with Wisconsin’s robust therapy infrastructure, and then Texas’ loophole-riddled insurance system. The central argument of her book is that personal wholeness requires owning one’s story in its entirety—letting trauma exist alongside healing, rather than compartmentalizing them both. Doing so, she suggests, is a slow and daily practice: “The more I dug deeper, the more I saw the complexity in becoming whole.” The book is most alive in its specific details, such as an account of an insurance catastrophe that resulted in Alero not getting the therapy she needed for six months, while the author watched helplessly as she regressed, or of the moment when Fela spotted a windmill and called it by name, taking the author by surprise. Overall, Dada-Olley writes with appealing restraint and precision, and when she expresses grief, she does so without a tone of self-pity. The book will resonate most deeply with caregivers and families navigating aspects of neurodivergence, but its insights regarding estrangement, chosen families, and the cost of putting one’s own needs last will reach much further.

An engagingly detailed memoir and an essential text for caregivers.