Men may feel they get the upper hand by treating women poorly, but long before "me too" Yunior told us otherwise in these stories and in the novel.

Reread these after recent revelations by both Junot Díaz & women who were victimized by him. I was interested to see how this would affect the reading.

If you've missed the fireworks, a quick rundown:

1. Junot Díaz publishes a personal essay in the New Yorker (The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma) revealing that he was the victim of repeated childhood sexual abuse by a man in his neighborhood, that he's paid dearly for it, can no longer write and has mistreated women tremendously while trying to hide behind a mask of machismo.
2. Fairly quickly he is confronted by a number of women, notably women of color, other writers of sexual misconduct and verbal abuse.
3. He decides (with the full blessing of the committee) not to take his place as Chair of the Pulitzer committee.
4. Bookstores decide to remove his books from the shelves, others keep him on, nobody knows what the right thing to do is, and everyone picks a side.

All of this led to discussions - hell, thousands of discussions - around me, with women, with other survivors, with everyone but writers. I don't know any writers or I'm sure they'd have talked to me too. EVERYONE in the trauma community was afire with this discussion. Eventually some of us got around to his writing, and my response was that I hoped I'd still be able to read it, since I really have been a fan, and it made me sad to read in the NYer that he could no longer write. Then I grabbed these short stories off my shelf and read them. This is where I landed:

I loved these the first time I read them. I was just as uncomfortable with the over-flexing of what we now call toxic masculinity then as I was this time. In fact, I think my reaction was pretty much the same: the narrator's toxicity harms him and everyone else in his life, including his great love - but in the end, he's hurt himself badly (some great female writer might want to take the feminine perspective someday.) If only we could get people in real life to own up to how harmful toxic masculinity actually is for everyone.

The character in these stories is clear on how he's harmed himself, and while he may use bravado to try and mask his torment, it clearly doesn't work. Everything, including his body, breaks down.

 

Explanations are not Excuses. 

This is not to say that these fictional stories should be taken as an indicator of real life, but misogyny is a problem for everyone, and the pain in the voice of these stories spells that out. In fact, I think these stories might be used as an example of how badly misogynistic bullshit works out for everyone. Men may feel they get the upper hand by treating women poorly, but long before "me too" Yunior told us otherwise in these stories and in the novel.

As a person who has lived through some stuff, I'm glad to have read these stories the first time and again now. They are excellent, and the message is probably more clear now than it was the first time I read it, though my history hasn't changed at all. I still react badly to the mind games, abuses of power and name calling, AND I appreciate the stories. They have a moral dimension I now see even more clearly, and it's about far more than diversity or a "unique voice." Yunor spells out how harmful his misogynistic buddies and lifestyle are to both the women and the men in his life.

Sexual abuse begets pain, anger, confusion, acting out and abuse - sometimes even more sexual abuse. The issue is not on whose side will we fight - we should all be on the side of protecting children and getting everyone (including rapists and child molestors) help before this cycle begins in yet another person. Otherwise we are doomed to an assembly line of horrors. I'd bet that if you spoke to the man who abused Junot Díaz, he'd probably have some horror tales to share about his life. None of this excuses anyone. It does show how harmful it all is for everyone, be it the abused person, the perpetrator or the many people who have relationships with either of them through lifetimes. Abuse is poison. It harms souls. It murders a part of us that we can never regain.

When we have no tools for coping with this existential terroristic threat, we often cope in tremendously harmful ways - both to ourselves and those we love. Interpersonal relationships are forever changed, and we're all the victim - everyone in society.

 

This is why "rape culture" and "toxic masculinity" must end. It's killing as many men as it is women. It's a way of acting out, and it's unacceptable, if understandable. It will reach us all eventually, and nobody comes through unscathed.

As for the stories, the final line "sometimes a start is all we ever get" rings just as poignantly as it did before I knew so much about Junot Díaz.

Akwaeke Emezi is a new, wonderfully fresh, voice to add to the many memoirs of living with C-PTSD (psychobabble below review) and surviving a traumatic childhood. Most go in rote portrayal through X happened, Y is the dysfunctional way we (identity states) dealt with it, Z is the (usually much healthier) way we learned to cope and the place we landed by the writing of the memoir/book.

Instead Emezi gives protagonist Ada and her self-states their own music and more importantly, own heritage, in telling a magical, spiritual, semi-autobiographical story of how the many came to be and worked their way through life to become the person they are now. They are distinctly Nigerian, and all of that Western psychobabble below is inadequate for anyone who hasn't sprung forth directly from a textbook - even for a person who grew up in the West. Imagine how absurd it is to anyone whose background is infused with spiritual aspects, beliefs and legends the West does not allow for.

An ogbanje is an Igbo spirit born into a human body, and this is how Emezi sees her young protagonist's system of being. There is a body and the body plays host to a number of gods and people, each running the whole system from time to time, weaving in and out to deal with the situation. When you think about it, we all have parts of ourselves that take over for certain situations. You at work are not the same you that crawls into bed with a partner at night or the same you who studied hard in university or the same you who did something you may not be so proud of. Everyone's identity works on a sort of continuum.

What Emezi has done so specially is tell her protagonist's story including all of the possibilities. Yes traumatic things happened, but perhaps she was born primed to be more than just one. Perhaps the ogbanje were there, just waiting for a chance to assert themselves. Others are born along the way. We do follow the general arc of birth to present, but the path is gorgeously written, spiritual and magical.

I could either quote the whole book or tell you what happens at every step, but I won't. I will tell you that like many lives, hers is not easy. They are different; Ada's life has more scary places than others. Parts of her react dysfunctionally, she goes "mad." Hard things happen, but they take on significance for the unique way the many who live within the body called Ada cope with each new horror, wonder or challenge.

The prose is lyrical and beautiful even when the events described are not. While it's fantastical, it's also very truthful. Perhaps this much truth can only be safely told by spirits, gods and a little bit of magic. The end is uplifting. If we are going to read "DID Memoirs" or stories of difference - be they about race, states of being, health, illness, whatever, let this be one you read.

 -- And as promised, psychobabble:

Complex Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is the newest Western nomenclature for what we used to call Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - which itself is the name used since 1994 for something formerly called "Multiple Personality Disorder" - a very misleading and much maligned term/diagnosis. C-PTSD et al are not a personality disorder, but rather the lack of a unified self-state or identity. The identities act as centers of information processing.

The term "personality" means "characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, moods and behaviors of the whole individual," while for a person with C-PTSD, the switches between identities and behavior patterns is the personality. So it's just a different way to process the world and oneself. It's not Sybil or the Three Faces of Eve or even very strange. It's called C-PTSD because it usually stems from a trauma so long-lasting or severe that the child creates a complex way to cope.

Glad we cleared that up.

I'm torn over this book. On one hand, any new resource is a good one. We have a dire need for more views on mental illness, and this writer husband needed an outlet. Many people in similar situations will gravitate to this in future, because it's one of very few similar books dedicated solely to mental illness. My heart goes out to anyone dealing with illness of a loved one. It's hard, and this man has the ability to just focus on his experience because he doesn't have to deal with the issues that quickly take over in 99.9% of cases in the US - inadequate care, lack of insurance, lack of resources, lack of support systems, huge financial hardship, homelessness...

This book does best early on, when he's furious, scared and confused at the sometimes arbitrary, often misleading and always rigid rules of psychiatric care. I highlighted huge sections of these early encounters with hospitals and staff because despite many feeling feel similarly, in the decades I've been in the field very little has changed beyond some nicer wording. So I cheered him for this.

My discomfort with the book came after that, when suddenly some really naive life choices are being made by a couple who has experienced an upsetting but single psychotic break. I have many questions I would like to ask, but that's not how books work.

Then there's the issue that these seem to be the luckiest two people on earth. Yes, even after the psychiatric diagnosis. Both have parents, family and friends alive, willing and able to drop everything, fly in from other countries and stay to help. There is not a single word in this book about the myriad ways insurance tries and usually succeeds in screwing the mentally ill - this would likely be because they can pay for treatment that isn't covered or because they stayed within an HMO-type system at Kaiser. Kaiser isn't known for cutting-edge mental health care, so perhaps that's why some things seemed strangely unexamined.

When her illness starts, both are able to quit jobs and even travel before they decide to start a family. Through it all they're still living a very nice lifestyle, despite it being far from the one they'd imagined. But that's how any illness works.

By the end, the book covers three episodes and hospitalizations in five years, and it seems like he thinks he's got it all worked out. Five years into severe psychiatric illness is a very short time. I don't even know that his lovely wife actually qualifies as severely mentally ill. She is able to hold down a job between her three episodes and has a between period. Of course it feels painstaking to all involved, but cancer of any stage feels painstaking, yet there are still stages.

Everyone has a right to tell their story. What I hope is that this book will not be anyone's sole resource. I just read another from Patrisse Khan-Cullers in When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir that shows a very different experience with a similar diagnosis in the same state. When it comes down to it, finances play a huge part in one's ability to get any care at all. Jail was the best the state of California could offer to her brother who had a well-documented lifelong case history.

Everyone has a right to tell their story, but this one felt a bit pat in the latter parts, like he has learned what the right things to say are, and he's saying them, but if I had this guy on my therapy couch, I'd be asking some tough questions about the pretty words. He got his feelings out, and that's what I got from this book: his feelings. It's a very one-sided, tiny slice of the beginning of his family's mental health journey. I wish them well, but I can't say I'd recommend this book to many people.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors' life story is not an easy one. Living in Los Angeles with her family, including a brother who we will learn suffers from schizoaffective disorder and a mother who works from sun up to well after dark to keep her children together, sheltered and fed is not easy, but it is what she knew as a child. There are far too many examples of things that should not happen in this book. Sadly, none of it is surprising, despite the shock that these things happen - repeatedly.

I found the story of her brother, a gentle man with a misunderstood illness which was criminalized, most upsetting. Through the years I have desperately tried to get some of the larger mental health organizations to understand that police should be the very last people involved in mental health checks or emergencies. I have often been met with complete agreement and little, if any, follow-through. So I gritted my teeth as I heard yet another story of a person penalized for being ill and the trauma brought on the entire family because of the stupidity and arrogance of those involved in this system.

While reading this book it's easy to see how many ways this system is broken. It's easy to feel almost beaten down and deflated. But what makes Patrisse Khan-Cullors and her fellow BLM founders, as well as others who have organized and planned behind the scenes to push for change to happen is the hope she clearly still has. She would not be working so hard if she didn't believe that things could change, and that's how I left this book. Her final words are uplifting, spirited, nurturing, gentle and kind - even as they continue to push us toward what often feels like insurmountable change. Knowing that women like this exist in the world is one more thing that gets me to the meeting after work when I'm tired and would rather veg out.

This is one woman's story. Hers is both typical and entirely unique. Her story tells us much about our current political and structural systems in the US, and how much needs to change. I hope she is a harbinger of the generations to come. I think she is.

I picked this up from the library just because I was there the day it came out, and I figured if I wanted to read it, I should get it while I could.

I'm feeling very mixed about reviewing it and I just will not give stars to this book. Not 5 not zero - I cannot rate someone's early healing journey in book form or otherwise.

This is a classic example of someone in an early stage of healing who puts all her shit out there. There's a point in every trauma survivor's healing when screaming into the void seems like the only way. It's just that it usually doesn't last forever, and I worry about what having a book -- which will be and has been reviewed -- will do to her, the person. It may not be a problem for years, but after reading this, I think there will come a point in Rose McGowan's life when her anger at seemingly every single person she's dealt with will settle a bit. 

She seems just as angry at some fans and paparazzi as she is at the men who sexually abused her. I get that. I've been there. It's easy to spew vitriol all over everything (whether everything deserves it or not.) At points in the healing process it's downright helpful. But it seems like maybe writing it down for all posterity is tempting the fate of her mental health. Where was the calm therapist who encouraged her to write it all down/get it all out, then put it away for a few years before going to a publisher? Was this published quickly because it "hit" at the right time with the #metoo movement? Does she not see that? 

The book is written well in early chapters -- in the places she's had more time and space to heal: her family and the horrible cult they were involved in. Then we move to Hollywood with her and everything devolves into an endless diatribe against almost anything that has to do with gender, power, television, hollywood, movies, people.... It really goes off the rails and I don't know that it's actually helpful to anyone beyond her, which is why this read like someone's journal entries in large part.

I may have also had a rough time fully appreciating because apart from some Charmed reruns, I don't remember ever seeing her in anything. So I'm not "a fan." I read it for the non-TV parts. While I think she makes important points in her own introduction about the societal pressures on women and girls to be beautiful and obedient, and while I agree that the culture makes this insidious whether I turn on my TV or not, she doesn't carry that helpful line through. She becomes her own worst enemy at times by overreacting to some things and putting everything on the same level. Being raped is far different from being told to wear a dress by a stylist you've hired, whether you were told to hire said stylist or not.

I also don't feel sorry for an actress working long (14-16 hour) days. Every woman I know works very long days and comes home to household duties or a second job or bills that can't be paid or elderly parents they care for or small children AND elderly parents, etc etc etc. Everyone I know gets paid far less than someone with a hit TV show, or even a TV show in reruns, so that part fell on deaf ears with me. I have to think that landing in Hollywood seems to almost require its own DSM category.

I'm not upset with Rose McGowan for wanting to write this book. I'm not upset with her for screaming her pain from the rooftops. I am wondering whether the publisher and publicist for this memoir will someday be added to the list of people who pimped her out because she could sell something, and this time it's a very precious personal story that should be hers and hers alone.