A fascinating, multi-voice look at the many aspects of mental health challenges.
Hun presents a series of discussions about different aspects of mental well-being.
This volume is one in a series by the author (the founder of the arts organization ThisConnect) addressing various aspects of mental health. The book opens with a foreword by Dr. William Wan relating a grim statistic: A recent Singapore mental health survey indicates that one in seven people have experienced some form of mental health challenge. As Hun notes at the beginning of this installment, the Covid-19 pandemic helped to move the conversation about mental health into more common parlance, but understanding of the subject is still lacking. In these pages, he presents the transcripts of conversations he’s had with various people affected by mental health issues that touch on many different aspects of the subject, from dealing with the trauma of suicide to underlining the post-Covid-19 importance of human contact, which a public speaker named Simone stresses in one dialogue: “I can’t emphasize it enough that our brains are configured from the time we’re in hunter-gatherer tribes and need connection,” she maintains. “When we’re not connected, things seem overwhelming.” Throughout the book, Hun stresses his belief that the key to navigating even the worst dark periods is perseverance. This attitude is effectively echoed by most of the interview subjects, including art psychotherapist Rachel Yang, who’s one among many to note the “conscious choice” required to make therapy effective.Hun’s decision to present these interviews as dramatic dialogues stripped of a broader narrative is ultimately a wise one; his approach allows the full power of the concepts to take center stage, making for compelling reading. If the personal voices will help readers see themselves in these talks, all the better.
A fascinating, multi-voice look at the many aspects of mental health challenges.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9789815058246
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin Random House SEA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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