Madness: A Bipolar Life by Mary Hornbacher

I want to own this book. I feel at home with this woman through it. Her pain shocks me and her sweet sense of survival brings me to tears. Hornbacher does an amazing feat of writing from a first person stream of consciousness at the age of ten. She then writes from her childhood up to her womanhood days.

She communicates her life to us by episodes. Each episode is colored by sadness, depression, anger, euphoria, boredom, quiet joy, fear, anxiety, romance, and mania. Some chapters are short, some are long. It makes the book feel more like a journal than it does a novel. Her powers of phrasing and sentence structure amplify her content as she effectively communicates her states of mind to the reader. She does not mediate her experiences with her opinion, rather the reader is left to encounter for her- or his- self. Her honesty about her self and the world she sees is raw. Whether she is communicating her self focused reasons for falling in love with her second husband or strong fears of being left alone when depressed, the reader is left feeling that Hornbacher held nothing back in her telling.

Hornbacher’s ability to communicate without pulling punches satisfies the purpose of her book. She humanizes herself to her reader. She presents herself in all her beauty, strength, weakness, madness, and complexity and not as another case study. Her strong use of emotion and empathy in her episodes not only humanizes her but humanizes those who suffer along with her. The fear, pain, and compassion of her parents, her friends, her husbands, and her mental health counselors are evident in their care and communication with her. Her bipolar sickness is also demystified. It becomes less a capricious malady and more a disease with quirks and rhythms all its own. In short, Hornbacher, becomes less a woman who suffers and more a woman with a full, rich, deep life that is well worth living.

Madness: A Bipolar Life is 280 pages. It has appendices at the end that counter balance the narrative heavy story with Bipolar Facts, Useful Websites¸ and a Bibliography. She ends the book with a series of acknowledgements to those who supported her in this endeavor. This book is a wonderful resource to those seeking to understand and love those who suffer from Bipolar 1 disorder.

Book Review of There Was A Country by Chinua Achebe

Where the Rain Began to Beat Us

“A man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body” (Achebe, 1). The next generation wants to bring Nigeria forward, we want to progress in healing the wounds of this nation and making it healthier, peaceful place. We need to know where the rain first began to beat our people, before we can begin to dry our people. According to Achebe, the rain first began to beat Africa when Europe “discovered” the continent (Achebe, 1). The problems faced by this present generation, some of them have their beginning during Chinua Achebe’s early. Achebe tells his story as a way of informing the next generation where to begin to heal our hurts.

His book seeks to act as a Genesis story to the joys and problems of Nigeria. He tells personal stories of his experiences of Nigeria as a freshly-minted country. He creates complex characters with comedic anecdotes and tragic endings and is careful to place them as well as himself with the historical framework of Nigeria’s short political history. He is careful to give both sides of each story a hearing and to include the world’s response to Nigerian events. His book is full of references, he is careful to point out to his audience that his memories are not misremembered or conjured up; rather his memories are based carefully researched historical fact. These facts include the many layered relationships and ruptures that led up to the Biafran war and the textured response to the subjugated Igbo people that included both mercies and continued injustices.

“There Was a Country” does not seek to answer specific questions of Nigeria’s often bemoaned political state. It does provide a place for those with questions to begin searching for answers. He seeks to place Nigeria’s pains and impediments in relation to the socio-political history of itself and of the world. He is careful to include inter tribal and intra tribal political considerations that went into the sometimes atrocious actions of communities. As a diplomat Biafra Achebe considers the response of Western nations. However, his writing is never academic. He always uses personal stories that portray the very human people that he worked with.

Chinua Achebe has many features that deepened my understanding and respect for his material. He started each chapter with one of his poems in order to further communicate the “particular tension of war” (Achebe, 2). He also includes two appendices. One praises the servant-leadership of Nelson Mandela. The other provides a full transcript of the Brigadier Banjo’s, the leading ground officer Nigeria’s invading force, first inaugural radio transmission to the conquered Midwest. He provides a full bibliography of his references to historical events and an index of terms.   

There Was a Country seeks to give a personal history of an event that changed the course of a nation. It bemoans the loss of the innocence of a nation and the bitter coming of age of a people. This book is also hopeful. The author believes that the problems that plague Africa in general and Nigeria especially can be healed. He believes healing can begin with treating the root causes of African discomfort and then working towards the symptoms. Truest of all, There Was a Country communicates his deep love for Nigeria.