The Reason I Jump

Plot summary

Yoshida and Mitchell, who have a child with autism themselves, wrote the introduction to the English-language version. The majority of the memoir is told through 58 questions Higashida and many other people dealing with autism are commonly asked, as well as interspersed sections of short prose. These sections are either memories Higashida shares or parabolic stories that relate to the themes discussed throughout the memoir. The collections ends with Higashida's short story, "I'm Right Here," which the author prefaces by saying:

I wrote this story in the hope that it will help you to understand how painful it is when you can't express yourself to the people you love. If this story connects with your heart in some way, then I believe you'll be able to connect back to the hearts of people with autism too.

Reception

While the book quickly became successful in Japan, it wasn't until after the English translation that it reached mainstream audiences across the world. On its publication in July 2013 in the UK, it was serialised on BBC Radio 4 as 'Book of the Week' and went straight to Number 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list. After its publication in the US (August 2013) it was featured on The Daily Show in an interview between Jon Stewart and David Mitchell and the following day it became #1 on Amazon's bestseller list. In the interview Stewart describes the memoir as "one of the most remarkable books I've read." Other celebrities also offer their support, such as Whoopi Goldberg in her gift guide section in People's 2013 holiday issue. In addition to traditional media outlets, the book received attention from autism advocacy groups across the globe, many, such as Autism Speaks, conducting interviews with Mitchell.

Michael Fitzpatrick, a medical writer known for writing about controversies in autism from the perspective of someone who is both a physician and a parent of a child with autism, said some scepticism of how much Higashida contributed to the book was justified because of the "scant explanation" of the process Higashida's mother used for helping him write using the character grid and expressed concern that the book "reinforces more myths than it challenges". According to Fitzpatrick, the The Reason I Jump is full of "moralising" and "platitudes" that sound like the views of a middle-aged parent of a child with autism. He said the book also contains many familiar tropes that have been propagated by advocates of facilitated communication, such as "Higashida's claim that people with autism are like 'travellers from a distant, distant past' who have come...'to help the people of the world remember what truly matters for the Earth,'" which Fitzpatrick compared to the notion promoted by anti-immunisation advocates that autistic children are "heralds of environmental catastrophe".

Like Mitchell, like other parents, I have spent much time pondering what is going on in the mind of my autistic son. But I have come around to agreeing with the pioneering Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger that 'the autist is only himself' – there is nobody trapped inside, no time traveller offering redemption to humanity...I believe that my son enjoys swimming pools because he likes water, not because, in the fanciful speculations of Higashida, he is yearning for a 'distant, distant watery past' and that he wants to return to a 'primeval era' in which 'aquatic lifeforms came into being and evolved'.

In the review by Temple Grandin, animal science professor and well-known autism spokesperson with autism, Grandin stated, "the book is an important addition to autobiographical accounts from nonverbal individuals with autism. Everybody who is working with nonverbal individuals with autism should read it." She also said she wished the book provided evidence of Higashida's ability to communicate fully and independently with a description of how he was taught. According to Grandin, she initially delayed reading the book because of the lack of documentation showing that Higashida was not using "the controversial method of facilitated communication, in which a person supports the wrist of the nonverbal person with autism". She said, "When this method is used, the facilitator is often the true author". Grandin explained that when she was asked to write a review of the book, she was confident that "Naoki’s book belongs to the other class of writings: those that come from nonverbal individuals with autism who can communicate fully independently with no wrist support".

Sallie Tisdale, writing for The New York Times, said the book raised questions about autism, but also about translation and she wondered how much the work was influenced by the three adults (Higashida's mother, Yoshida, and Mitchell) involved in translating the book and their experiences as parents of autistic children. She concluded, "We have to be careful about turning what we find into what we want."

Some critics have said Higashida's experiences only represent Higashida, not all children with autism, because of the wide variances in ability and opinions among each person with autism.