Imagine what it would be like not to be able to communicate with those we love. For many individuals living with nonverbal autism and their families, this is their everyday reality. The Golden Hat is an intimate response to this reality created by Kate Winslet, Margret Ericsdottir, and her son Keli, who has nonverbal autism. Kate and Margret’s stories, their personal email correspondence, and Keli’s poetry give us a profound insight into the world of those living with autism. Kate has shared this story with some of the world’s most famous people, posing the question: “What is important to you to express?” Their responses are a collection of intimate self-portraits and unique quotes. Put together by Kate, Margret, and the dedicated team who work daily on the Golden Hat Foundation, this project has been a labor of love. All the author proceeds from this groundbreaking book will benefit the Golden Hat Foundation, founded by Kate Winslet and Margret Ericsdottir to build innovative living campuses for people with autism and raise public awareness of their intellectual capabilities.
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Some years after her son Keli's diagnosis of nonverbal autism, Margret Ericsdottir got the idea to put together a documentary film showcasing the daily joys and trials of autistic children and their parents. The film was originally released in Margret's native Iceland under the title The Sunshine Boy. Once HBO bought U.S. rights to it, Kate Winslet was brought on to do the English voice-over work and it was re-released in American markets as A Mother's Courage. Margret initially didn't want the film to be about her but more about other families living with autism. However, she and her son Keli do appear in the final product. It was through her trips to the studio where Winslet was doing the narration recordings that Margret got to know Winslet, famous for her work in such films as Titanic, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and Revolutionary Road.
Winslet not only became good friends with Margret but also got to know Keli. After her voice-over work wrapped, Kate and Margret continued their new friendship via email and phone calls, until one day Winslet, inspired by her time with Keli, shared her idea with Margret to start up an autism awareness foundation. The foundation would be called The Golden Hat Foundation, in honor of a poem Keli wrote shortly after he was taught a way to get his words out via a dry-erase board:
The Golden Hat
This boy had a golden hat.
The hat was magical. It could talk.
The boy did not have any voice. He had autism.
His hat was always with him.
His hat was lost one day.
Now he had no way of telling them his stories.
His mom and dad became sad.
They taught him spelling on a letterboard.
It was hard.
End.
~Keli Thorsteinsson
Winslet's idea was to send her favorite trilby hat around the world to numerous celebrities, asking them to put on the hat, take a selfie, and share a quote that expressed something important to them -- a life motto, a mantra, something funny -- anything that they wanted to say that they thought expressed an important element of their personality, life, beliefs, etc. Winslet collected all the images and quotes, put them together in this coffee table style book and sent it out into the world with the idea that the proceeds would raise awareness and funds for the newly created Golden Hat Foundation. The foundation's goal would not only be to raise autism awareness alone, but also to help fund assisted living facilities for those with severe cases of autism, those who are unable to successfully function independently in society. Winslet's goal is to create funds for these facilities so that they might develop more extensive programs that would offer not only a sense of community but also specialized education and job training and opportunities for residents.
Also included in the early pages of this book is an essay written by Margret, in which she shares some of her observances and lessons learned from being mother to autistic Keli. She talks of how specialists told her how he would likely never mentally develop past the age of 2, yet over the years she discovers his refined likes and tastes -- his favorite food being sushi, his favorite authors J.R.R. Tolkien and Mark Twain. Her point illustrating that classic line, "If you've met one child with autism, you've met one child with autism." There's no one textbook way for this condition to manifest. And while she's quick to give examples of all the beautiful things she's learned from being Keli's mother, she also keeps it real, admitting her frustrations at times with Keli's inability to vocalize things, especially when it comes to serious medical issues. As she explains, some days a mother's intuition only goes so far when trying to read if your child is in pain.
Along with the celebrity photos and quotes, Winslet also includes the first words ever uttered by 10 autistic people who were primarily non-verbal for most of their lives. She also shows the emails between her and Margret as they slowly began putting this foundation together over the course of many months. There's even a section of the book dedicated to Keli's poems he crafted after he became familiar with working with a dry-erase board to form phrases long trapped in his mind.
The poems, essays and emails all help to illustrate just how important this cause is. The celebrity photos are fun too, though sometimes the quotes didn't always resonate with me and some photos seemed to have little effort put into them. But some though, some had that quiet power to them that really grabs the browser of this book. A good flip-through collection that helps fund a worthy cause. Give it a look!
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EXTRAS:
Trailer for The Golden Boy / A Mother's Love
View The Golden Boy / A Mother's Love online
Purchase DVD for The Golden Boy / A Mother's Love
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