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“Powerful . . . a poetic meditation on how love or attempts at loving can drive us to madness.”—The Boston Globe
“We learn about the cracks in Felix’s upbringing, the hurt from the breakup itself, and a pain that spans a lifetime, all through a sharp millennial voice.”—Time
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, Chicago Public Library, Electric Lit
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.
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"Powerful . . . a poetic meditation on how love or attempts at loving can drive us to madness— [Dyscalculia is] the perfect antidote to the pressure, societal or personal, to perform love or even lust . . . Felix’s voice is confident and uninhibited, so direct and full of candor . . . Felix captures the essence of emotional unraveling with raw, heartbreaking beauty . . . Dyscalculia describes emotional miscalculation with precision."
— Boston Globe
I’m not sure I’ve ever read something that’s so ferocious and measured as Dyscalculia.
— Purse BookStunning . . . gorgeous.
— BookRiot, 10 Riveting New Nonfiction Books to Read in February 2023We learn about the cracks in Felix’s upbringing, the hurt from the breakup itself, and a pain that spans a lifetime, all through a sharp millennial voice.
— TIME, Here Are the 12 New Books You Should Read in February[An] extraordinary volume reckoning with intimacy, healing, perception, love and loss.
— Ms. Magazine, Most Anticipated Feminist Reads of 2023If you’re into poetic, rigorous personal narratives (think Elissa Washuta and Ocean Vuong), you’ll want this one on your list.
— Literary Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2023Enchanting . . . Leaping seamlessly between the abstraction of formulas and the honest, verbose mess of a break-up, Dyscalculia pushes the metaphor of loss as a math problem in imaginative new directions.
— Bustle, The Most Anticipated Books of 2023Dyscalculia is a frank exploration of pleasure, heartbreak, and reclamation. It makes a case for softness, for lostness, for black girlhood, that rejects containment and asks instead for care.
— Raven Leilani, author of LusterDyscalculia took my breath, grabbed my heart, and made me see. It brought me back to every heartbreak I’ve ever endured, and I marveled at Camonghne Felix’s deep knowing and even deeper articulation of the pain of loss . . . This book is a gift and a miracle.
— Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church LadiesI am deeply shaken by the profound singularity of Dyscalculia. Felix manages to cast, and really conjure, a new portal into the agony of miscalculating love and the pain one can experience in loving relationships.
— Kiese Laymon, author of HeavyDevoured it in one sitting–[I was] riveted, propelled, rearranged.
— Leslie JamisonFelix’s narrative is as much about the wounds and scars of what it means to love as it is about self-preservation as a political act for Black women.
— Public BooksVisceral and radiant, this soul-searching self-interrogation resonates.
— Publishers WeeklyA wildly smart, singular redemption story that is greater than the sum of its parts.
— Kirkus ReviewsBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Camonghne Felix is a poet, political strategist, media junkie, and cultural worker. She received an MA in Arts Politics from NYU, an MFA from Bard College, and has received Fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo and Poets House. The 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee is the author of the chapbook Yolk, and was recently listed by Black Youth Project as a “Black Girl From the Future You Should Know.” Her first full-length collection of poems, Build Yourself a Boat, was a 2017 University of Wisconsin Press Brittingham & Pollak Prize finalist, and a 2017 Fordham University Poets Out Loud semi-finalist.