The advocate and educator Rita Miceli discusses her new memoir Giaci and Me: A Mother’s Journey of Loving and Raising an Autistic Child (Pownal Street Press, 2024), with Joseph Planta.

Giaci and Me: A Mother’s Journey of Loving and Raising an Autistic Child by Rita Miceli (Pownal Street Press, 2024). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Giaci and Me

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

In a new memoir, advocate and mother Rita Miceli shares the story of her son Giaci’s autism diagnosis in early childhood through to his teen years and now into adulthood. In the book, Ms. Miceli, who joins me now, offers her innermost thoughts, fears, and narrates the challenges and victories she’s experienced raising her son, as well as advocating for other children with autism, and their parents. Her advocacy and lobbying of government officials for funding and support is also talked about in the book that Temple Grandin has praised because of the author’s practice of tolerance and procedural routine. I’ll ask Rita about what life was like for her family, and what the system in Ontario, then as now, is like for families with an autistic child. I’ll also ask her about what she’d like readers to get out of this book. Rita Miceli is an educator and an advocate for autism awareness. She teaches in the Autism and Behavioural Science Graduate Program at St. Clair College. She joined me late last month from her home in Windsor, Ontario. The book is called Giaci and Me: A Mother’s Journey of Loving and Raising an Autistic Child. It’s published by Pownal Street Press. Visit www.giaciandme,com for more. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Rita Miceli; Ms. Miceli, good morning.

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