I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying by Bassey Ikpi

You want to be more understanding of others. She’s just so damn funny and her wit often makes her essays as humorous as they are heartbreaking…. “Ikpi is not the first to write about mental illness, but I can’t say I’ve ever read a narrative about it like this… her writing is yes, poetic and lyrical with tenderness and thoughtfulness but also funny. Thanks for writing this.” - Scott Simon, NPR ‘My mother loves and hates and heals and hurts with the same hands.’ The noted spoken word artist has written a book of essays that perform a memoir….

“As phrases that can stop and startle you, here’s just one. 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. 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. 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. 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. '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 Heavyįrom 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.

A Bookish Best Nonfiction of Summer Selection.An Electric Lit 48 Books by Women and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019.A Publishers Weekly Spring Preview Selection.A Bustle 21 New Memoirs That Will Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You.A Bitch Magazine Most Anticipated Books of 2019.A Good Housekeeping Best 60 Books of the Year.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. 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.

I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying by Bassey Ikpi