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.
