‘May I say that I’m very glad to meet you,”  Woody Brown taps on his word board. Brown is formal, funny and strikingly eloquent. He has a formidable ability to tell stories that reach into the mind of his characters and express what they are thinking, and what they think others are thinking about them. Brown is also autistic and non-speaking.

His first novel, Upward Bound, tells the story of everyday life at the eponymous adult day care centre in southern California. The title is ironic – the young adults, referred to as clients, are anything but upward bound. By and large, they are stifled, patronised, unheard and unseen. Despite their shortcomings, the staff are portrayed with a surprising tenderness.

The story is told from multiple perspectives – Walter, loosely based on Brown, is only understood by his mother; Hollywood-handsome Tom desperately tries to show the neurotypical world that he understands, by blinking; student Ann, who is doing voluntary work to boost her CV, fancies Tom but is blind to the charms of the other clients; Dave, the care centre’s director, really wanted to be an actor, and treats Upward Bound’s annual show like a Broadway production. Brown has created a wonderful portrait of the lives of people destined to be misunderstood by virtually all of us because, as he says, their brain and body are not on speaking terms (pun intended).

Brown, 28, is at home with his mother, Mary, in Los Angeles when we chat. Mary holds up the letter board on which he taps out his answers. She then speaks them back to me. Brown is not totally without speech. Sometimes, he comes out with a word or phrase, often delivered in a high pitch and repeated. This is known as echolalia.

Brown and his mother are incredibly close. She hugs him tight as a blanket when he is stressed, waits patiently for his answers and seems to understand him almost as well as he does himself. “She has been at my side for every moment of my journey,” Brown taps. “Without her there is no me.”

Nobody really knows what makes Brown and other non-speaking autistic people the way they are. But what his family knows for sure is that as a young child he was written off by specialists. His parents were told that he was a lost cause; that there was nothing going on inside. They sensed otherwise. When he was a toddler Mary watched Soma Mukhopadhyay, whose son Tito is autistic and non-speaking, on the TV show 60 Minutes. Mukhopadhyay had taught Tito to type, and now he could communicate with the world. She thought it would be amazing if Woody could learn a fraction of what Tito had. Mary took him to see Mukhopadhyay, who wrote letters on slips of paper and jumbled them up. “I’ve been told he’s mentally retarded, and she says ‘Woody spell cat’. And he pulls down the C and the A and the T. He’s three at that point!”

But it made little difference. When he went to school, teachers dismissed him as a no-hoper, and thought it wasn’t even worth trying to educate him. He was put in the lowest class and left to his own devices. At the age of eight, Mary tells me, the kids in his class were asked if they knew another word for sad. “When it gets to his turn he spells out ‘melancholy’ and he spells it correctly.”

And still it made no difference. The more Brown was misunderstood, the worse his behaviour became. He was bored, angry and disruptive. He threw chairs in class. “I was in the pit of despair,” Brown taps. How did he climb out? “It was a gradual ascent, starting when I was 12 and finally allowed to join the remedial class for lessons,” he taps.

You weren’t even in the remedial class? “I was meant to be in the lowest special ed class, which was so demoralising. At least in the remedial room they tried to teach some basic academics.”

“Sorry boss! Sorry boss!” he shouts in a high-pitched cartoon voice. It’s a shock when you first hear Brown speak.

Is he happy now? “I am very happy now that I have real purpose and productivity. I want this for all autistic people. One of the reasons I wanted to be a great writer was that I wanted neurotypical people to read my book, not out of pity but because it was a good book. That way I can reach the hordes who underestimate and infantilise us, and show them how vivid and magnificent we are.”

Brown is wearing a lovely T-shirt, featuring Japanese trains. I ask him what it means. “I love trains and Murakami. Hence Japanese trains. Murakami’s my favourite author. I’ve read so many of his books. We read every day, and I can’t get enough!” Mary reads aloud to him because he has visuospatial issues that make it difficult to focus on the words on the page.

You have a similar simple, limpid style to Murakami, I say. He smiles. “He’s also not very social like me!” he taps.

Mary asks him a question: “Woody, when you refer to the pit of despair what does that metaphor of the pit mean to you?”

“Murakami always talks about a well, which stands in his books as a metaphor for depression and loneliness,” he taps. “There’s a well in every Murakami book. I think of Murakami’s wells as a visual manifestation of my isolation.”

As he taps, I notice he’s looking away from me. At first I assume he doesn’t like to make eye contact. But then I realise sometimes he looks straight at me, and that he seems to be engaged in an activity when he looks away. I ask what he’s doing.

“May I say I think better when I have my screens going?” Brown says.

Now it’s Mary’s turn to smile. “Should we show Simon?” she asks.

“Yes!!!” he bellows.

There are three computer screens on a mobile cart, and he’s playing or watching each one as we chat – one shows his favourite cartoon, Thomas the Tank Engine, on the second he plays Angry Birds and on the third there are videos of old-school steam locomotives.

I ask him if he’s occupying himself with all the screens because he finds me boring. “No,” he taps. “May I say I have many screens running through my brain at all times. My brain is so busy that I have to occupy more than one channel at a time. If I only looked at you the top of my head might blow right off! It’s exhausting to narrow my vista to one window.”

We have agreed to do the interview in 30-minute bursts because any longer is exhausting for Brown.

“Hey mom, sorry you just don’t understand. You just don’t understand,” he says in the high-pitched voice.

“Do you want a break?” she asks. “Yes,” he says in a deep voice that I assume would be his natural tone.

See you later, I say.

Brown is already walking away with his cart of screens.

“Byyyyyyee. Goodbye Molly,” he says, reverting to the cartoon voice. Mary explains that Molly is a character in Toy Story 3.

***

Half an hour later we reconvene. Brown is newly energised. I ask in what way Upward Bound’s Walter is like him. “Walter is my alter ego. We share aspects of disability and personality.” In what way? “Many aspects of non-speaking autism are shared, particularly the frustration of being misunderstood by most people. I wanted to show how Walter was perceived by the other characters to get a glimpse of how inaccurately others see him. Only his mom is able to translate his verbal nonsense and Walter is lucky to have that one small corner of understanding.”

At one point Walter’s mother invites fellow autistic parent friends over to the house to watch a film about Temple Grandin. Walter hovers in the background watching the film. The portrayal of the autistic animal science professor infuriates him because “this lovely, lithe actress” [Claire Danes] plays her, whereas in real life Grandin is “big and awkward and ugly, in the way that Eleanor Roosevelt was ugly, magnificently ugly”. Walter has an autistic meltdown and puts his hand through a window. “May I say the Temple Grandin chapter is autobiographical.” He shows me his scar.

Your mum seems more fun than Walter’s mum, I say. “She used to be more stressed out,” he taps. “Her behaviour improved as mine did.” Mary is laughing. “Also we have both been working on our anxiety which helps us be nice.” Is anxiety at the core of people with autism? “Anxiety is a constant companion, but I can manage it better now. Meditation has helped greatly.”

Upward Bound’s Tom, for all his beauty, is understood by nobody. “I remember a boy like Tom from childhood, and I have always been concerned about him,” Brown taps. “I worry that no one ever heard him, and that he languishes somewhere alone.” Does he think many autistic people languish unheard? “Oh yes! People put their own ideas on to a blank page that they can’t otherwise read,” he taps.

“Us! Us!” he shouts.

When was the last time you saw him? “Maybe when I was 10.” Was he also Hollywood handsome? “Oh yes! He was gorgeous!”

The person least capable of understanding the clients at Upward Bound is Dave, the director. “Dave is a symbol of well-intended but ultimately self-centred carers who find their way into the land of disability by accident.” Did he have any carers like Dave? “Oh yes!” he taps. “Their voices are louder than the true believers.” What does he mean? “People who get it tend to be more quiet and introspective. They listen more than they need to be heard.”

One person who does get it is Carlos, a carer with a troubled background. “I love Carlos. He is the hero of the story,” he taps.

“Us!” he shouts.

“We’re starting to lose him,” Mary says. We agree to continue tomorrow at 10am.

“I’ve got more to say, but I’m all done now,” Brown taps.

“Wowowoowo! Goodbye James, see you tomorrow,” he says. James is a locomotive in Thomas the Tank Engine.

***

The next day they are five minutes late, and Brown seems a little stressed about it.

“In trouble,” he says repeatedly.

You’re not in trouble with me, I say.

“Sorry boss, sorry boss!” he shouts in the high-pitched cartoon voice.

Mary gives him a deep hug, which settles him.

In 2022, Brown became the first non-speaking autistic graduate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he received the English department’s top writing honours. He completed his master’s at Columbia University in 2024. Mary attended both courses alongside him. He also took his cart and three screens to his studies. Multitasking was the only way he could focus on lectures and seminars. In his bedroom at home, he has far more screens all going at the same time.

Mary is also an English graduate, and worked for 20 years as a story analyst in the film industry with the likes of Steven Spielberg. Brown’s father Drew is head of production at Paramount TV. Mary anticipates there will be sceptics who suggest that she has helped Brown with his work, but she says she has had nothing to do with the creative process. Sure, she translates Brown’s sentences off the letterboard and then types them up, but apart from checking whether a comma or full stop is needed, and occasionally reminding him he’s used the same word twice in a paragraph, she insists she had no influence over the book.

When you’re with the two of them, this soon becomes apparent. Mary is super smart and good with words. But Brown is super-super smart and brilliant with words. Sometimes she will ask him to explain something because she can’t find the right language. Take trains, for example. Not only is Brown obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine in a childlike way, he also explains the workings of his mind via trains with a concept that could be the basis of a metaphysics PhD. “My mind feels like there are thousands of train lines all running at once, and there are trains on all of them. But they’re not on flat ground, they’re all in 3D. In the universe above me there are all these trains on their tracks just floating around and I’m on all the trains all the time.”

Why do so many autistic people love trains? “Parallel lines and soothing progress,” he taps. But, of course, when there are infinite trains floating in the universe and he’s on every one it’s not so soothing. The trailer to a documentary that has been made about Brown plays out against a horrible shunting and whistling of the railway station from hell.

Is that what you always hear in your head? “My head is so loud that it’s like Grand Central at rush hour. When alone in my room I turn everything, all my screens, to top volume. I drive my parents nuts with the noise. Cacophony is the only word to describe it.” Does that give you relative peace? “Strangely, yes. Mom loves quiet, I love chaos.” Does he really love the chaos or does it enable him to find a relative serenity? “Chaos outside neutralises the chaos inside,” he taps.

You are one complicated dude Woody Brown, I say.

“Sir Topham Hatt!” he shouts in a high pitch.

I ask Brown about the various romances in Upward Bound – all of them unrequited. Walter loves Emma, who is also autistic and non-speaking. He believes, or hopes, he can hear her return his love in her thrumming. “Emma is a real person. My friend since childhood,” he taps. “And I do feel love for her. I know we communicate via autistic energy fields. Our senses are disordered which makes us less attuned to some input and hyper-attuned to others. My childish wish is to find someone who will make a life with me in spite of my shortcomings.”

Why is that childish? “Fabulistic may be a better word. It’s hard for people who are so dependent to have a relationship in real life.”

Could you see yourself living away from your parents? “Yes. They are old, and I will probably survive them. My sister Annie and her husband, Matt, want to share their lives with me when Mom and Dad can’t take care of me any more. They like me. Go figure!”

Well, there’s lots to like about you, I say.

“Locomotives!” he shouts.

Mary talks to me about Brown’s echolalia. She says for so long she thought the words were random. Eventually, she discovered they were a form of shorthand. “Should I tell Simon the story of straight?” she asks him. He nods. “Woody used to watch videos with a blue dog. He still does. I can’t say the name because it stresses him. He’d have a meltdown and he’d say ‘straight’ all the time. How old were you when this was happening?”

“About six,” Woody taps.

“Then I watched him watching the video and the character in the video was trying to hang up a picture, and it was crooked, and he couldn’t get it straight and he was just so frustrated, and when I realised ‘straight’ meant frustration I was like ‘Oh my gosh’. I’d been dismissing these words as nonsense.”

“I use phrases that I can access with my mouth to compensate for all the words my mouth can’t say,” Brown taps.

Autism is currently being demonised by some on the political right in the United States. Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr have referred to the condition as a “disease” and said there is an “epidemic”. How does he feel about that? “May I say that they both distress me terribly. Their words and actions are dangerous.”

In Upward Bound, the carer Ann talks about the clients who can speak but do so constantly and repetitively, concluding that speech is not their superpower, it’s their kryptonite. I ask Brown if he regards his inability to talk as a superpower or kryptonite. Neither, he taps. “My disorder is just that. A disability that says nothing about who I really am. Some people have more strikes against them than others, but we all have things to overcome. Is being non-speaking worse than a child’s fate in Gaza or an immigrant’s destiny on the streets of Minneapolis? How dare I complain from my comfortable home? Perspective is everything.”

Brown is now working on his second novel, Alfie. “It’s a bildungsroman about my search for camaraderie,” he taps. Mary apologises, and says she’s not sure how to pronounce bildungsroman.

“Alfie is a boy in Arkansas who excels at baseball,” Brown taps. Is he autistic? “No, although he hides his anxiety behind his catcher’s mask.”

We’ve been chatting for an hour today. As I say my farewells, I tell Brown how much I love the title Upward Bound. He smiles. “Irony is my middle name,” he taps.

Well Woody Irony Brown, it’s been great talking to you, I say.

“Thank you,” he says. “Byeeeee! Say goodbye Molly.”

• Upward Bound by Woody Brown is published by Jonathan Cape on 2 April. To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.