Normal Sucks

Confessional and often hilarious, in Normal Sucks a neuro-diverse writer, advocate, and father meditates on his life, offering the radical message that we should stop trying to fix people and start empowering them to succeed Jonathan Mooney blends anecdote, expertise, and memoir to present a new mode of thinking about how we live and learnâindividually, uniquely, and with advantages and upshots to every type of brain and body. As a neuro-diverse kid diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD who didn't learn to read until he was twelve, the realization that that he wasnât the problemâthe system and the concept of normal wereâsaved Mooneyâs life and fundamentally changed his outlook. Here he explores the toll that being not normal takes on kids and adults when theyâre trapped in environments that label them, shame them, and tell them, even in subtle ways, that they are the problem. But, he argues, if we can reorient the ways in which we think about diversity, abilities, and disabilities, we can start a revolution. A highly sought after public speaker, Mooney has been inspiring audiences with his story and his message for nearly two decades. Now heâs ready to share what heâs learned from parents, educators, researchers, and kids in a book that is as much a survival guide as it is a call to action. Whip-smart, insightful, and utterly inspiringâand movingly framed as a letter to his own young sons, as they work to find their ways in the worldâthis book will upend what we call normal and empower us all.