Reviewed by Tabitha Thompson

The Mind Tree is a fascinating exploration of autism from the inside. Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay displays classic autistic behaviors such as tantrums, hand flapping and lack of eye contact, and yet also demonstrates sophisticated language skills in spite of his inability to utter but a few basic sounds. He communicates through writing and by pointing (unassisted) to an alphabet board. The autobiographical stories in this book were written when Tito was eight and eleven. As with other books written by people with autism, it is a typically hyper-self-aware interior account, detailing experiences as understood from within.

“Today, the fragmented self of hand and body parts which I once saw myself as, have unified to a living ‘me,’ striving for a complete ‘me’... it is not lack of social understanding which causes the weird behavior, but is lack of [being able] to use oneself in the socially acceptable way, which causes the weird or the undesirable behavior.”

Tito discusses living as a fractured self; one self an uncontrollable body of behaviors, the other a thinking mind desperately trying to understand the body. He explains that this fragmentation is the reason for the withdrawal of “autistic hearts,” “the reason for their escape.” He offers many such insights, including the fact that those with autism must be taught how to connect the mind and body.

Perhaps the most unusual thing about Tito, though, is his ability to understand what others think and feel and to recognize that others interpret his actions differently than he does. Almost invariably autistics display “mind-blindness,” a distinct inability to understand that others may not know or feel just as they do. But not Tito, who is even able to write fiction from an alternate perspective. Indeed, while the first half of the book is autobiographical nonfiction, the second half is poems and fictional stories: one a disturbing account of the world of a nonverbal boy, the other about a tree given self-awareness but not sight or speech: The Mind Tree.