As a result, potentially millions live with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences, and the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shame. Absolutely useless to the individual, and only addressed white collar corporate culture, completely ignoring blue and pink collar work, and offered absolutely no practical advice for the neurodivergent individual working in environments that are controlled at a level far higher than the individual location. I really found this enlightening; this is, in some ways, the successor to Susan Cain's "Quiet", the book about introversion. 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.

I picked this up because as an autistic woman, I'm always looking for new books about neurodiversity, but I was honestly quite disappointed. I also must criticize the amount of time that is spend grouping typical human behavior into neurodivergence. Jenara Nerenberg’s wide-ranging Divergent Mind asks and answers these and other essential questions, offering a vision for how individuals and society can take better advantage of the many ways in which we are human.As other reviewers have complained, the author is way too generous with generalizations and focuses on highly successful women who are diagnosed later in life. This was yet another book by a well-meaning, cis-het, middle- to upper-class, white woman that just…totally missed the mark. But it has become common knowledge in autistic advocacy that training cops about autism hasn't resulted in cops treating Black autistic people any better. Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity, ADHD, autism, misophonia, dyslexia, SPD, and more, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women and describes practical changes in how we communicate, how we design our surroundings, and how we can better support divergent minds.

The book de-pathologizes those of us who most profoundly and intensely think and feel the world around us. Unmasking is something that has many more risks for autistic Black women and autistic women of color than for autistic white women. 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the author and anyone else involved in this book to learn that terms like "high functioning" and "low functioning" are outdated and harmful. This book is geared towards late-diagnosed autistic women who are able to have a "normal" job, given sufficient sensory and social accommodations. 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.It isn't a "new study", as one of the back blurbs describes it - not in the sense of a scientific study. While some of the earlier chapters in the book gave helpful definitions for different neurodivergencies, I recommend looking into other sources like, you know, Google and Instagram for the same exact information that’s most likely presented in a less privileged manner. And I'll save my criticisms of treating "Highly Sensitive Person" like an actual diagnosis because oh my god. My sensory issues are a big part of my experience as an autistic woman, but it's nowhere near the only one. 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.

Her inclusion of Samantha Craft's list of ways that autism can present in women was instrumental for me to recognize it in myself, and am now working to get psychological testing. To start, the author looked at neurodivergences with the most limited view: from the lens of a white cishet woman from a financially privileged background with pretty much no effort to look outside that narrow view.

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.