The basic story behind Dawn
Prince-Hughes’ memoir Songs of the Gorilla Nation is fascinating: she
explains how she grew up knowing she was very different from other people, and
it was not until she started spending a good deal of time with gorillas that
she came to feel a sense of companionship with others.  Only at the age of 36,
when she had already gone through many difficult times in her life, and was
already coming to put her life together, did she seek professional diagnosis
and have her suspicions confirmed that she had autism.  From that time, she
managed to get a Ph.D., write a scholarly book, edit another about the experience
of autistic college students, and then write this memoir.  She writes with a
strong conviction in the personhood of gorillas and other apes, and as a strong
advocate for their rights.  Furthermore, rather like Temple Grandin’s claims
concerning the links between autism and some farm animals, she believes that
her condition of Asperger’s syndrome gives her special insight into the
experience of gorillas. 

However, Songs of the Gorilla
Nation is a rather difficult book to read.  The language is not technical
and it is quite short, but the prose is rather choppy in style.  Prince-Hughes
also includes more of her own poetry than probably most readers would want.  As
she tells of some of the troubling episodes from her childhood, the book also
becomes hard to continue because it is troubling.  She had a great number of
social difficulties and she also had what might be viewed as
obsessive-compulsive traits.  Her family was not supportive of her and she was
very much on her own.  She started drinking when she was twelve.  As a young
woman, she became an erotic dancer in a seedy club.  She was labeled as queer
quite early in her life, and she later came to realize that she was in fact a
lesbian, so she also had to battle the homophobia of other people. Her life
only really began to improve once she started volunteering at a local zoo.

Prince-Hughes writes about
gorillas, using both established facts and her own personal experience with
them, and argues that they have many more capacities than are generally recognized. 
Since this is a popular work, her arguments are rather sketchy and it is hard
to know how credible they are.  She also writes rather sketchily about her own
life as it improved, her relationship with her life partner Tara, and their
son, their day-to-day existence and the successes she has had in her career. 
Readers who have a strong interest in Asperger’s or who have enjoyed the
writing of Temple Grandin may be motivated to read Songs of the Gorilla
Nation.

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor
of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Memoirs