My other world

On bun crises and blouse tics: A literary scholar with Asperger’s takes us into her other world. She shows that autism is amongst us, but often remains undetected. When a woman with a Ph.D. eats the same meals every day and prefers texts to people, she may be thought to be an eccentric academic. Nobody, however, thinks of autism. Gabrijela Mecky Zaragoza had her autism thesis confirmed at the age of 35. Her story about autism is different: more joyful, more feminine. It is not only about glass walls and other obstacles to conversation, but also about the magic of invariability, her endless hunger for research, her need to rank everything from scarves to earrings. Gabrijela’s voyage through time and space reveals that the little hedgehog from the city of Hamburg has come a long way. She now lives in the heart of Mexico City.