Donna Williams "Nobody Nowhere" is an autobiography whose very publication forced its author, Donna Williams, out of the relative safety of autism and into the very real dangers of "the world." William's rage is palpable, from the word "go." This is a story of two battles, a battle to keep out "the world" and a battle to join it. It tells of the battles within my own world and the battle lines, tactics used, and casualties of my private war against others. This is my attempt at a truce, the conditions of which are on my own terms. I have, throughout my private war, been a she, a you, a Donna, a me, and finally, and I. All of us will tell it like it was and like it is. If you sense a distance, you are not mistaken; it's real. Welcome to my world. Throughout, Williams descibes one terrifyingly encounter after another with the cognitive "mirrors" she employs to willfully ratchet herself one painful cog after another closer to the normal world of "red people" every fiber of her being rebells against. One day I left a building through the same door I had come in, yet I found that somehow the building had changed places. It was not on the same side of the street as before. I walked back into the building, turning my back on the street outside, then walked back out again. It was still the opposite from the way it had been when I had originally gone in. The whole world seemed to have turned itself upside down, inside out, and back to front. Everything was like a mirror image of what it had been when I had entered the building. I climbed into my car and sat their frightened. I knew the names of the streets and had nver had any trouble finding my way around. But now just like driving into a mirror image, I found myself, street after street, at the wrong end, opposite the direction I wanted to go. I ended up on the wrong side of town completely. Instead of driving toward home, I had, as in a mirror, driven away from it. This happened on and off for two days. I became terribly afraid that I had gone mad. I realized that, whether I was mad or not, I needed a job where I was standing in one place all day. "Nobody Nowhere" (ISBN 0-380-72217-8) is copyright © 1992 Donna Williams and is available from Avon Books, New York.