I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying: Essays

Fraught memories are interrogated and reconstructed in these essays from Ikpi, a poet, performer, and mental health advocate who here grapples with having “lived with depression my whole life,” as well as her struggles with anxiety and bipolar II. Born in Nigeria, she describes coming to America as a small child—rejoining her parents who’d emigrated earlier—carrying memories of her maternal grandmother and entering a tense household divided between a “father [who] loved his parents” and a “mother [who] did not love hers.” Affecting memories of growing up—watching the unfolding Challenger disaster on TV as an eight-year-old in Stillwater, Okla., taking her first trip back to Nigeria as a 12-year-old—flavor a memoir otherwise focused on a nearly clinical account of mental health struggles. Ikpi describes in painstaking detail episodes such as an attack of anxiety before taking a flight, or depression that results in a week of hospitalization. Along the way, she learns of her grandmother’s dementia and is herself diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome before finding the right doctor and an effective treatment. Ikpi’s account is a gift for fellow sufferers; it may also serve instructively for those who care about them, by candidly conveying how one woman faced and overcame her demons. Agent: Eric Smith, P.S. Literary. (Aug.)