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An alphabet for Joanna : a portrait of my mother in 26 fragments / by Rogers, Damian,author.;
"Throughout her life, acclaimed poet Damian Rogers was never given a satisfactory account of the circumstances around her birth. The "truth" behind the stories she was told by her mother--the free-spirited, beautiful and often troubled Joanna--constantly shifted, and Damian could collect only fragments: a trip to California, a mysterious trauma, a miscarriage followed by a psychotic break, and a dramatic return to Detroit, pregnant. Now, in the present day, as 40-year-old Damian copes with Joanna's debilitating frontal-lobe dementia, she realizes she may never truly uncover the full story. At once a riveting portrait of a time and place (Detroit and Southern California from the mid-1960s to the late-1980s), an unconventional mother-daughter saga, and an exploration of how memory constantly shapes and reshapes our intimate relationships, at its heart An Alphabet for Joanna is a meditation on the relationship between mental illness and creative life. Damian Rogers writes effortlessly across genres, including lyrical memoir, investigative reporting, and powerful philosophical reflection, as she pieces together the ways we build lives out of stories. And by tracing her mother's deterioration into the present day, she poignantly shows how, even when memory fails, we remain connected through art, empathy, and imagination."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Rogers, Damian.; Rogers, Damian; Children of mentally ill mothers; Mentally ill mothers; Mothers and daughters.; Poets, Canadian (English);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The bridesmaid's daughter : from Grace Kelly's wedding to a women's shelter--searching for the truth about my mother / by Giles, Nyna,author.; Claxton, Eve,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-262).A daughter's moving search to understand her mother, Carolyn Scott--once a bridesmaid to Princess Grace and one of the first Ford models--who later in life spent years living in a homeless shelter.
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Scott, Carolyn.; Grace, Princess of Monaco, 1929-1982; Giles, Nyna; Grace, Princess of Monaco, 1929-1982-; Children of mentally ill mothers; Homeless persons; Homeless women; Mentally ill women; Mentally ill; Mothers and daughters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Visitations [graphic novel] / by Egbert, Corey,1988-author,illustrator.;
Corey's mom has always made him feel safe. Especially after his parents' divorce, and the dreaded visitations with his dad begin. But as Corey grows older, he can't ignore his mother's increasingly wild accusations. Her insistence that Corey act as his sister's protector. Her declaration that Corey's father is the devil. Soon, she whisks Corey and his sister away from their home and into the boiling Nevada desert. There, they struggle to survive with little food and the police on their trail. Meanwhile, under the night sky, Corey is visited by a flickering ghost, a girl who urges him to fight for a different world--one outside of his mother's spoon-fed tales, one Corey must find before it's too late.
Subjects: Autobiographical fiction.; Coming-of-age comics.; Graphic novels.; Egbert, Corey, 1988-; Children of divorced parents; Children of mentally ill mothers; Dysfunctional families; Latter Day Saints; Parental kidnapping; Siblings;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The spark : a mother's story of nurturing genius / by Barnett, Kristine.;
Kristine Barnett, the mother of an autistic child, shares the strategies she utilized for tapping her son's potential.LSC
Subjects: Barnett, Kristine.; Barnett, Jacob, 1998-; Parents of autistic children; Autistic children; Mothers and sons; Genius;
© 2013., Random House Canada,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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This bright future : a memoir / by Hall, Bobby,author.;
"A raw and unfiltered journey into the life and mind of Bobby Hall, who emerged from the wreckage of a horrifically abusive childhood to become an era-defining artist ... A self-described orphan with parents, Bobby Hall began life as Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, the only child of an alcoholic, mentally ill mother on welfare and an absent, crack-addicted father. After enduring seventeen years of abuse and neglect, Bobby ran away from home and--with nothing more than a discarded laptop and a ninth-grade education--he found his voice in the world of hip-hop and a new home in a place he never expected: the untamed and uncharted wilderness of the social media age"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Hall, Bobby.; Adult child abuse victims; Adult children of alcoholics; Adult children of drug addicts; Adult children of dysfunctional families; Internet personalities; Rap musicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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While you were out : an intimate family portrait of mental illness in an era of silence / by Kissinger, Meg,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."From award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger, a searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them. Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger's family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard. But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding. A heavily-medicated mother hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a manic father prone to violence, and children in the throes of bipolar disorder and depression, two of whom would take their own lives. Through it all, the Kissingers faced the world with their signature dark humor and the unspoken family rule--never talk about it. While You Were Out begins as the personal story of one family's struggles, then opens outward as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country's flawed mental health care. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative reporting, the book explores the consequences of shame, the havoc of botched public policy, and the hope offered by new treatment strategies. This is a story of one family's love and devotion in the face of relentless struggle. It is a book for anyone who cares about someone with mental illness. In other words, it is a book for everyone"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Kissinger, Meg.; Kissinger, Meg; Kissinger family.; Families of the mentally ill; Mental illness; Mentally ill; Photography of families.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Parallel lines / by St. Aubyn, Edward,1960-author.;
"It's the summer of 2021, and Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him grappling with his fragile grip on reality and his persistent hunger to connect with the biological mother who abandoned him as a child. His therapist, Martin, is facing challenges of his own, including his adopted daughter's tenuous relationship with her own biological mother -- a predicament that makes Sebastian's struggle feel uncannily proximate to her own. Olivia is producing a radio series on catastrophic natural disasters, which itself seems to be running parallel to the events unfolding in her personal life, as her best friend Lucy faces a grave diagnosis, and her husband, Francis, pursues his mission of re-wilding the world. Over the course of the next year their fates collide in outrageous and poignant ways, as each of their destinies is revealed in a marvelous new light."--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Adopted children; Conduct of life; Families; Fate and fatalism; Interpersonal relations; Mental illness;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Strangers to ourselves : unsettled minds and the stories that make us / by Aviv, Rachel,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."The highly anticipated debut from the acclaimed award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv compels us to examine how the stories we tell about mental illness shape our sense of who we are. Mental illnesses are often seen as chronic and intractable forces that take over our lives, that define us. But how much do the stories we tell about our illnesses--and the process of diagnosis--inform their course? In Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv writes about how explanations for mental distress may shape our health, our sense of who we are, and the possibilities for who we can be in the world. Drawing on deep, original reporting and unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lived in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children's forgiveness after a period of psychosis; a man seeking revenge against a prominent psychoanalytic hospital through a lawsuit that dramatizes the clash between two irreconcilable models of the mind; an affluent young woman whose lifelong psychiatric treatment eventually leads her to go off her meds in a desperate attempt to figure out who she would be without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv's exploration is refracted through her own account of being institutionalized at the age of six and meeting Hava, a friend and fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel--until it no longer does. While the stories unfold in different eras and cultures, they converge in the psychic hinterlands, the outer edges of human experience. Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations and endeavor to recover a sense of agency, in search of new ways to understand a self in the world. Challenging conventional ideas of mental disease as something static, Aviv's accounts are testaments to the porousness and resilience of the mind"--
Subjects: Mental illness; Mentally ill;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hidden Valley Road : inside the mind of an American family / by Kolker, Robert,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Schizophrenics; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenics; Mentally ill;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The mind electric : a neurologist on the strangeness and wonder of our brains / by Anand, Pria,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.In this collection of medical tales a neurologist reckons with the stories we tell about our brains, and the stories our brains tell us. A girl believes she has been struck blind for stealing a kiss. A mother watches helplessly as each of her children is replaced by a changeling. A woman is haunted each month by the same four chords of a single song. In neurology, illness is inextricably linked with narrative, the clues to unravelling these mysteries hidden in both the details of a patient's story and the tells of their body. Stories are etched into the very structure of our brains, coded so deeply that the impulse for storytelling survives and even surges after the most devastating injuries. But our brains are also porous -- the stories they concoct shaped by cultural narratives about bodies and illness that permeate the minds of doctors and patients alike. In the history of medicine, some stories are heard, while others -- the narratives of women, of Black and brown people, of displaced people, of disempowered people -- are too often dismissed. In The Mind Electric, neurologist Pria Anand reveals -- through case study, history, fable, and memoir -- all that the medical establishment has overlooked: the complexity and wonder of brains in health and in extremis, and the vast grey area between sanity and insanity, doctor and patient, and illness and wellness, each separated from the next by the thin veneer of a different story. Moving from the Boston hospital where she treats her patients, to her childhood years in India, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, she demonstrates again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that even the most peculiar symptoms can show us something universal about ourselves as humans.
Subjects: Brain; Brain; Mental illness.; Neurology.; Neurosciences.; Racism in medicine.; Sexism in medicine.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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