Meet Eustacia Cutler

Eustacia Cutler, Temple Grandin’s mother, earned a B.A. from Harvard, was a band singer at the Pierre Hotel, New York City, performed and composed for NYC cabaret, and wrote school lessons for major TV networks. Her research on autism and other disabilities created the scripts for two WGBH television documentaries: The Disquieted and The Innocents, a prize-winning first. Her 2006 book, A Thorn in My Pocket, describes raising Temple in the conservative world of the ’50s when autistic children were routinely diagnosed as infant schizophrenics.

Her latest book, “Autism Old As Time”, will be a collection of essays written to take the reader on a journey through history, examining the impact of autism on the opinions and solutions of writers, poets, and other prominent individuals from the early 19th century through today. While her first book described raising Temple, this book describes the journey that Ms. Cutler took as she came to terms with autism in her life and saw our ever-evolving capacity, as individuals and as a society, to keep reinventing ourselves. She looks at autism from the point of view of the phoenix: that ancient symbol of culture renewing itself.