I'm telling the truth, but I'm lying : essays / Bassey Ikpi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ikpi, Bassey, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bipolar disorder--Biography.

Bipolar disorder.

Nigerian Americans--Biography.

Nigerian Americans.

Ikpi, Bassey.

Genre:

Essays.

Autobiographies.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

ix, 257 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Harper Perennial, 2019.

Summary:

In I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying Bassey 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. 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 fa�cade 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.

Contents:

Portrait of a face at forty

The first essay is to prove to you that I have a childhood

When they come for me

The hands that held me

Young girls they do get weary

Yaka

Becoming a liar

Tehuti

The quiet before

Take two for pain

Like a war

This is what happens

What it feels like

Beauty in the breakdown

It has a name

Side effects may include

Life sentence

As hopeless as smoke

The day before

We don't wear blues

Some days are fine

When we bleed

Searching for magic.

ISBN:

9780062698346

0062698346

OCLC:

1101639650

Publisher Number:

99981876899