Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You

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I know that most of my audience isn't as passionate about psychology as I am so I understand if you don't understand why I love this book which is totally fair. I kept reading in hopes that the author might criticize the idea of productivity as one that harms disabled people whether they're like me or not, but such criticism never came.

Worth the read but may make you crave for a deeper dive of a book which hopefully is on the way from Jenara or other authors. Since the book is about Gender and neurodivergence, I don't expect a deep dive on Race and ADHD/Autism however given how recently this work was published I find the sparse mentioning of race to be inadequate. This book left me wondering who exactly this book was written for, the individual neurodivergent, or for those who have the power to enact systemic change?

When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.

It ends up feeling really "White Feminist" to spend so much time speaking about gender and gender alone. The author's passing endorsement of training cops about ways autistic traits can look like disobedience feels especially ignorant, given the amount of young autistic Black men and women who have been arrested or assaulted by police who knew they were autistic. The book de-pathologizes those of us who most profoundly and intensely think and feel the world around us. I found the author's treatment of the problems that undiagnosed autistic women experience at the hands of psychiatry lacking, especially with respect to race. I was very much looking forward to reading this, as the premise is laudable/something I am selfishly interested in, and I was extremely disappointed afterward.

Overall, as an autistic person, I would not want someone I know to read this book and think that this is representative of my experience. Her clients and previous speaking engagements include the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Tahirih Justice Center, Park Day School, OZY Media, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and others. I loved that Nerenberg explained all of the ways the brain functions out of the norm and how to deal with this. Additionally, this book was released in 2020, which is enough time for the author and anyone else involved in this book to learn that terms like "high functioning" and "low functioning" are outdated and harmful.

I think this would be useful for someone who is completely new to any of the forms of neurodivergence contained within the book, but otherwise this isn’t that great.I feel that the author collected a lot of stories from women that were closer to her economic social circles, which is fine, but I’m very much a working class woman who was looking for more help navigating the struggles I have within my social class, which I didn’t find in this book. It contains a lot of suggestions that are probably very helpful for autistic people who do work "normal" jobs, for making their workspace more comfortable.