https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/04/who-really-wrote-autistic-author-woody-brown-novel/686814/?gift=ZSO8-QoU1-1L0duyI2Sx0iRiv0FivqJMrtOzUaHNCuk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share -
"Katharine Beals, a linguist affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania who has a son with autism, has studied Brown’s controversial method of communication since the early 2000s, and she has cataloged the ways in which it fails. She told me that she found the clip from NBC to be upsetting. Beals conceded that it can be hard in some cases to say whether such communication is real—
but not in this one. “This isn’t subtle,” she said. “You can see that he’s not pointing to the letters.”
In the broadcast, Mary says: “To finally be in the room where learning was happening, I felt like I was in heaven.” But Woody’s finger seems to say: Tobgdhi nvza."