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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library | BIOGRAPHY IKPI, BA. | 31330008837753 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Haverhill Public Library | BIOG/IKPI B | 31479006784796 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Methuen - Nevins Memorial Library | B IKPI, B. | 31548003279982 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Westford - J.V. Fletcher Library | B IKPI | 31990004808569 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
In I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying Bassey Ikpi explores her life--as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist--through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy.
A The Root Favorite Books of the Year * A Good Housekeeping Best 60 Books of the Year * A YNaija 10 Notable Books of the Year * A GOOP 10 New Favorite Books * A Cup of Jo 5 Big Books of Fall * A Bitch Magazine Most Anticipated Books of 2019 * A Bustle 21 New Memoirs That Will Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You * A Publishers Weekly Spring Preview Selection * An Electric Lit 48 Books by Women and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019 * A Bookish Best Nonfiction of Summer Selection
"We will not think or talk about mental health or normalcy the same after reading this momentous art object moonlighting as a colossal collection of essays." --Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
From her early childhood in Nigeria through her adolescence in Oklahoma, Bassey Ikpi lived with a tumult of emotions, cycling between extreme euphoria and deep depression--sometimes within the course of a single day. By the time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken word artist and traveling with HBO's Def Poetry Jam, channeling her life into art. But beneath the façade of the confident performer, Bassey's mental health was in a precipitous decline, culminating in a breakdown that resulted in hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II.
In I'm Telling the Truth, But I'm Lying, Bassey Ikpi breaks open our understanding of mental health by giving us intimate access to her own. Exploring shame, confusion, medication, and family in the process, Bassey looks at how mental health impacts every aspect of our lives--how we appear to others, and more importantly to ourselves--and challenges our preconception about what it means to be "normal." Viscerally raw and honest, the result is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are--and the ways, as honest as we try to be, each of these stories can also be a lie.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fraught memories are interrogated and reconstructed in these essays from Ikpi, a poet, performer, and mental health advocate who here grapples with having "lived with depression my whole life," as well as her struggles with anxiety and bipolar II. Born in Nigeria, she describes coming to America as a small child-rejoining her parents who'd emigrated earlier-carrying memories of her maternal grandmother and entering a tense household divided between a "father [who] loved his parents" and a "mother [who] did not love hers." Affecting memories of growing up-watching the unfolding Challenger disaster on TV as an eight-year-old in Stillwater, Okla., taking her first trip back to Nigeria as a 12-year-old-flavor a memoir otherwise focused on a nearly clinical account of mental health struggles. Ikpi describes in painstaking detail episodes such as an attack of anxiety before taking a flight, or depression that results in a week of hospitalization. Along the way, she learns of her grandmother's dementia and is herself diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome before finding the right doctor and an effective treatment. Ikpi's account is a gift for fellow sufferers; it may also serve instructively for those who care about them, by candidly conveying how one woman faced and overcame her demons. Agent: Eric Smith, P.S. Literary. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
"Imagine you don't fit anywhere, not even in your own head": A Nigerian immigrant and debut author writes of mental illness and its staggering challenges.Catapult contributing editor Ikpi opens with the suggestion that the fractured memories to follow in her memoir may or may not be true. "The trick to lying," she writes, "is to tell people that you're a bad liar because then they'll believe what you say." What she has to say is sometimes heartbreaking, as she recounts a search for reliable memories when she has so few of them. "I need to prove to you that I didn't enter the world broken," she writes before admitting the paucity of fact in a whirl of impressions and sensations. What she does know is that she doesn't know. Things were kept from her, familial facts were forgotten, genealogies erased, and unpleasant truths swept aside. Little things proved overwhelming: the discovery, for instance, that "the twins from my favorite movie, The Parent Trap, were actually one person." If the distance from Nigeria to Oklahoma was great, the leap to adulthood in New York was greater. Depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety proved to be formidable opponents, isolation a constant even surrounded by millions of people. One of the most affecting parts of the book is a simple diarylike reconstruction of a long day that began and ended with an airplane flight, a day of sleeplessness, hunger, and worry ("this doesn't happen to normal people"). Other strong moments in this relentlessly honest narrative recount failed love ("he was the only one I regret being too broken for"), the shame of not being the immigrant success her parents had hoped for, and the quest for wholeness amid a cornucopia of medications targeting a long list of troubles that she expresses simply: "I don't feel good."Deep truths underlie this fragmented, compelling narrative, which leaves readers wishing only the best for its harrowed author. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In 22 essays, American-Nigerian speaker, writer, and mental-health advocate Ikpi tells gripping tales of everything from a childhood fear of leprosy to her experiences with the drug ecstasy ( its very name revealed its power ) to later struggles with insomnia, bipolar disorder, and anxiety. The hitch: she admits to being a liar, so it's impossible to know what's true and what's not. Her biggest fib, she says, is telling people she's OK. She asks herself questions, such as, What's wrong with me? She wants to feel like someone whose brain worked and to be normal. Medications come with side effects and she wants ones that don't make her gain or lose weight, and that don't make her drowsy or nervous. Her tortured thoughts and actions (she straddles a guy she barely knows in a cab) are heartbreaking. Highly anticipated, this collection is raw, courageous, and unsettling. People struggling with mental-health issues will appreciate Ikpi as a talented kindred spirit as she raises such universal questions as: What does it mean to be crazy anyway? Haunting and affirming.--Karen Springen Copyright 2019 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Nigerian American writer and mental health advocate Ikpi (HBO's Def Poetry Jam, editor, Catapult; founder, the Siwe Project) debuts an essay collection that takes readers on a journey from Nigeria to Stillwater, OK, to Brooklyn; from childhood to adulthood; from the depression and mania of bipolar II disorder and mental breakdown to the beginning of stability. The writings are intimate, intense, and sometimes harrowing and claustrophobic. Ikpi struggles to be "normal" and prove to herself and everyone else she's just fine. But she isn't. The author goes days without eating or sleeping, and when she finally does sleep, she's disappointed to wake up. When at last Ikpi gets help, finding the right medication combination is not easy. She stops taking her meds and ends up in the hospital for a week. The loneliness of knowing something is wrong but not being able to fix it is terrifying, the despair suffocating. Ikpi's writing is poetic. It skips, batters, sinks, soars, and flows according to events and the state of her mental health. VERDICT Visceral and unsettling, these essays will not easily be forgotten. A must-read.--Stefanie Hollmichel, Univ. of St. Thomas Law Lib., Minneapolis
Table of Contents
| Portrait of a Face at Forty | p. ix |
| This First Essay Is to Prove to You That I Had a Childhood | p. 1 |
| When They Come for Me | p. 11 |
| The Hands That Held Me | p. 15 |
| Young Girls They Do Get Weary | p. 25 |
| Yaka | p. 33 |
| Becoming a Liar | p. 49 |
| Tehuti | p. 57 |
| The Quiet Before | p. 75 |
| Take Two for Pain | p. 87 |
| Like a War | p. 95 |
| This Is What Happens | p. 113 |
| What It Feels Like | p. 143 |
| Beauty in the Breakdown | p. 151 |
| It Has a Name | p. 159 |
| Side Effects May Include | p. 173 |
| Life Sentence | p. 179 |
| As Hopeless as Smoke | p. 185 |
| The Day Before | p. 187 |
| We Don't Wear Blues | p. 197 |
| Some Days Are Fine | p. 225 |
| When We Bleed | p. 235 |
| Searching for Magic | p. 245 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 249 |