Dyscalculia by Camonghne Felix is a powerful and evocative exploration of identity, trauma, and the complexities of navigating a world that often feels at odds with one’s own experiences. Through a series of poignant poems, Felix delves into the intricacies of living with dyscalculia—a learning difference that affects one’s ability to understand and manipulate numbers—while also addressing broader themes of race, mental health, and personal growth.

Beautiful, heart-wrenching, sad, hopeful are just a few words I can use this to describe this book. I love the way Felix writes and the prose in this book had me turning page after page.

The title of this short memoir is captivating. Dyscalculia is a learning disability where individuals have difficulty understanding math. Oftentimes the book felt disjointed and it seemed the writer was jumping around the place as she shared her childhood and adult experiences. However, I felt the writing style must mirror what it feels like to have dyscalculia. It doesn’t read like a typical memoir but it is one that will have your mind intrigued.

Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation - Camonghne Felix

“When Camonghne Felix goes through a monumental breakup, culminating in a hospital stay, everything--from her early childhood trauma and mental health to her relationship with mathematics--shows up in the tapestry of her healing. In this exquisite and raw reflection, Felix repossesses herself through the exploration of history she'd left behind, using her childhood "dyscalculia"--a disorder that makes it difficult to learn math--as a metaphor for the consequences of her miscalculations in love. Through reckoning with this breakup and other adult gambles in intimacy, Felix asks the question: Who gets to assert their right to pain?

Dyscalculia negotiates the misalignments of perception and reality, love and harm, and the politics of heartbreak, both romantic and familial.”

In some ways it feels wrong to say I loved this book - since it is essentially a memoir about someone else’s trauma. But damn. This one really hit me hard. I felt like Camonghne was speaking directly to my soul.As someone who experienced some of the same trauma, I felt like this book just sunk it’s teeth and me and won’t ever let go - in the best way possible.

This reads almost more like lyrical poetry and the audiobook, read by the author, was beautiful and like spoken word. I recommend also reading the physical book - structure is unique and adds to the lyrical/poetic story.

Favorite quote: “It was 2nd grade when I realized I was different and that it would be a tragedy.”

I desperately wanted to enjoy this book but ultimately came away from it feeling disappointed. While I understand the benefit in therapeutic writing, I think the book would've benefited from being written in the future once the author has had more time to process her trauma. I'm looking forward to reading other pieces of hers as she grows and matures in her voice and her self.

a gorgeous fragmented, prosaic memoir about mental health, childhood trauma, SA and moving through earth shattering breakups. i will reread this over and over again

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. It's hard to review a memoir for content, but easy to review it for writing. This book felt like one long beautiful poem, and I saved several quotes from it. I could have read a hundred more pages. It was so good!

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.. This memoir starts at a painful breakup but jumps in time from her childhood, struggles and pain throughout her life and a discussion of mental health, a diagnosis that sheds some light on her past and how to move forward. I've noticed that poets have a way with prose that makes it lovelier to the ear and this book is no exception. She uses mathematical ideas and interweaves them with her life story. It deals with several topics, one of them her challenge with mathematics, and thus the title of the book.

I am a huge memoir fan and this did not disappoint. This memoir is short but mighty. After reading this, I can safely say I will read anything Camonghne Felix writes. It is an extremely difficult book to give a star rating as it is so personal to the author but with that being said I can say that Dyscalculia is beautiful, tragic, and well worth the read.

I would recommend all potential readers to check trigger warnings before starting.

this collection was fantastic and not surprising giving Felix's other work. Whether short or long the connection to the stories of her childhood and relationships were engaging.

*I received an advance copy of this book from Net Galley, even though I did not review the book before its publication.

WOW, I devoured "Dyscalculia" this past weekend. Suffice it to say, I've never read a book quite like this before. I think I had been putting off reading it because I wasn't sure what to expect, and I had been dealing with some heartbreak of my own.

Reading Dyscalculia feels like listening to a slam poet live. Camonghne Felix writes in a way that is so dynamic; the words quite literally move you weaving in and out of Felix's life and experiences. While not a long book, it's a powerful read, and I really felt like I was right there alongside Felix throughout the entire experience.

I think writing (especially poetry or anything poetry-adjacent, at least in my personal experience) can be such a powerful way to work through trauma and other hurtful/intense/powerful experiences. This book felt cathartic, and it's not even my lived story!

I highly recommend this incredible piece of work by Camonghne Felix.

Very interesting. I’m not sure why I thought this was going to be more of a typical autobiography but I liked it regardless.

I find it difficult to rate memoirs, but I found this very eye opening and very powerful. But I really disliked the formatting, how the paragraphs were separated and etc, it felt strange to read it that way

This is a heartbreaking coming of age/slice of life.
I enjoyed that it was a quick read and discuss mental health issues rarely talked about in Black communities and finding help without stigmatization. Also realizing her own self worth.

Thank you NetGalley.com for an advanced copy of Dyscalculia by Camonghne Felix. #Dyscalculia #NetGalley

This book wasn't quite what I was expecting, though admittedly, I saw the title and requested an ARC pretty quickly, since I am usually on the lookout for titles related to neurodiversity. I ended up really appreciating this book on its own terms, however, especially for its poetic take on the traditional memoir form. Be warned, it deals with CSA and is pretty heartbreaking at times (the last part is as advertised I think). Still, it is a short book, a lyrical book that I enjoyed listening to, and it is also important for presenting us with the speaker/author's particular point of view, especially this specific perspective of a neurodiverse Black woman.
Quickly looking up the author, it looks like she is an acclaimed poet already, and I'm glad to see that. Beyond the subject matter, I like that this memoir presents an opportunity of bringing poetry a bit more into the mainstream. Recommended!
Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

This book took me on a journey. I loved the format and the way the story unfolded in its own unique way.

Dyscalculia is finally getting the attention it deserves as the lesser-known sibling condition to dyslexia. I was intrigued by the title of Camonghne Felix’s book, its tantalizing promise to connect dyscalculia to Felix’s tribulations with romance. Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation does all of this, though with less focus on math skills than I hoped. Thank you to NetGalley and publisher One World for the eARC!

Felix experiences trauma at a young age when her cousin molests her. She recounts in stark terms how the aftermath of this trauma was also traumatic, and as a result, something in her brain changed and she started to struggle with math. Though various doctor’s visits netted pronouncements of ADHD, etc.—with one doctor venturing to suggest bipolar disorder, much to her mother’s dismay—medication regimes didn’t seem to help much, and no one, from Felix’s telling, was all that interested in actually getting to the root of the issue. So Felix grew up, drifted, got into a bad romantic relationship, and here we are. We relive the relationship with her, the break up, the depression, the self-harm and suicide attempt. The psychological evaluations. The cycle.

I really enjoyed the style in which this book is written, which surprised me. Each page is short, a paragraph or two. Felix leans on her experience as a poet to conjure up careful descriptions of scenes and action. The chapters here aren’t so much sustained stories as they are lengthy series of missives, back and forth, from different elements of her psyche. They remind me a lot of the poetry of amanda lovelace!

I went into this knowing little about the actual content of the book and expecting there to be more discussion of dyscalculia. In that respect, my hopes were dashed. But that isn’t the book’s fault, just a miscalculation on my part (see what I did there). I mention it only to help others who might have formed the same impression. Don’t get me wrong: the dyscalculia talk is definitely there, but it is a part of the larger discourse Felix engages in over these ideas about being broken and whether or not she is fixable.

Ultimately, Dyscalculia is about how pain and pleasure are too often connected. How what’s bad for you can feel good, and what’s good for can feel bad. How the people in your life who hurt you can sometimes be the only ones you want to let in, and the ones who are there to help don’t always know how. It’s a deep meditation on how external events can reshape our brain chemistry, which in turn affects how we move through life.

Did this book hit me the same I suspect it will hit others? Not really. It verges on poetry in a way that made me zoom through it. And while I can empathize with Felix’s intense episodes of pain, disappointment, and loss, my life has been extremely different from hers; I’m not sure I have ever felt the same depths that she has felt. Dyscalculia did not resonate with me, but I am sure it will resonate with many.

Thank you NetGalley & Random House for this ARC.

I don’t know what I was expecting when requesting this ARC but it went above and beyond.

Camonghne Felix has such a beautiful and unique way with words. I felt every emotion in depth. Where she grieved, I grieved; where she felt lost, I felt lost too, where she laughed, I laughed too, where she couldn’t anymore, I just wished she kept on fighting and writing, the world deserves to know her and her art.

This book is so short yet so powerful. I hope you get to read it too when you find it.

Notes: Check up for trigger warnings! This tiny but mighty book is full of traumatic experiences that may be difficult to read for some.

Beautiful prose, very lyrical. Felt like the sections about X were weaker than the sections centered on her emotional experiences. I liked the minimalism and the intensity of the author's writing.

Felix writes vividly. Every dozen or so pages you hit a stop-in-your-tracks phrase. I think she captured the compounding trauma that happens in the aftermath of reporting an assault the best I’m ever seen it (the “process rolled into more process” passage especially). I loved how she leaned into the cliché about love, taking ownership of ad a statement of ability. I found the ideas to sometimes be confused, but not unpleasantly- it was accurate to get experience. There is so much blank space in this book. An unexpected amount. In her review, Roxanne Gay said it seemed incomplete by design; I agree. Thank you to One World and NetGalley for the digital ARC.