I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying
Essays
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4.3 • 45 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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 loved his parents" and a "mother 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.)
Customer Reviews
about real life
This book is a dark circle with a ring of light around it.
Bassey is real & beautiful. Her writing encapsulating.
No book has ever made me grapple with the complexity of life & emotions as much. Immensely easy to read despite the hard things to read about. That’s just how talented of a writer she is.
Heartbreaking and replenishing
From the opening words I knew this would hit so close to home it would hurt and sure enough.
We don't share all the same details but as a queer Nigerian in the States wrestling with his own mental health issues my story share a lot with the author's.
But even as I struggle to find the words to convey it (to my family...to my therapist) it was a cathartic experience to find someone who has found the words and conveys them so beautifully and with such honesty and dignity.
I am so grateful to have happened on this stellar work and this perspective.