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A review by maximum_moxie
Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You by Jenara Nerenberg
4.0
Personal Experience Reading: 3 stars
Importance: 4 stars
I found this book essential reading for the topic alone. As a neurodivergent femme, it’s great to see some of my experiences described and contextualized by someone else who knows the feelings depicted. I especially appreciate how the author makes this about systemic change, not just ‘getting over’ neurodivergence but making a world in which it isn’t disabling. This is something I rarely see in popular psychology books, and though I would have liked to see it taken farther (maybe the modern workplace is hostile to all human flourishing by design and just asking for visibility for certain groups will co-opt them into that hellscape, anyone?), it’s a great strength of this kind of activist writing.
Personally, I found the text itself a bit scattered, though it feels a bit gross to say that when the book is precisely about how the ‘scattered’, unexpected connections neurodivergent people make are valuable. At least for me, though, anecdotes and studies weren’t adequately connected for me to get a central underlying argument until the end, and I skimmed much of the book’s second half. Even so, by including as many neurodivergent lives and voices as possible, the author gives us a useful introduction to a world I always wished I could find—where difference is not necessarily bad and can even help make a new kind of living.
Importance: 4 stars
I found this book essential reading for the topic alone. As a neurodivergent femme, it’s great to see some of my experiences described and contextualized by someone else who knows the feelings depicted. I especially appreciate how the author makes this about systemic change, not just ‘getting over’ neurodivergence but making a world in which it isn’t disabling. This is something I rarely see in popular psychology books, and though I would have liked to see it taken farther (maybe the modern workplace is hostile to all human flourishing by design and just asking for visibility for certain groups will co-opt them into that hellscape, anyone?), it’s a great strength of this kind of activist writing.
Personally, I found the text itself a bit scattered, though it feels a bit gross to say that when the book is precisely about how the ‘scattered’, unexpected connections neurodivergent people make are valuable. At least for me, though, anecdotes and studies weren’t adequately connected for me to get a central underlying argument until the end, and I skimmed much of the book’s second half. Even so, by including as many neurodivergent lives and voices as possible, the author gives us a useful introduction to a world I always wished I could find—where difference is not necessarily bad and can even help make a new kind of living.