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| Reading Uche Okonkwo's A Kind of Madness during my lunch break - November 2024 |
Happy New Year Sunshine,
Welcome to 2025...lovely to see you here.
Since we are still ripe in our resolution making by ways, I am starting the year with a book review resolution - to do more book reviews, and to do them immediately after reading the book. I read A Kind of Madness by Nigerian author Uche Okonkwo sometime in November.
I drafted the review here but did not touch it until today.
As the title suggests, this book explores different kinds of "madness" through ten essays.
Before we dive into it, I want to put my mental health advocacy hat on and say that in our field, language matters and words like “madness” specially if used to describe someone or symptoms of mental illness (can) perpetuate stigma. From a literature angle, the title and use of “madness” throughout the book is spot on. Another thing that is spot on, is how relatable all, I mean all, the stories are. This is a diary of what growing up and experiencing life in Africa is all about. I use the word Africa because though these narratives are based (fictional or not) in Nigeria, they resound to what happens in Kenya - at least from my growing up experiences.
The narratives in the book touch on issues like jealousy, superstition, family dynamics, and survival, sometimes intersecting these topics with aspects of mental health conditions (I will try not to make this a clinical psychology class and stick to reviewing).
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| At one of my happy place in Lancaster - the Public Library, November 2024 |
I will try my best to lump the stories into common themes - because I have failed miserably at ranking them in order of how much I enjoyed them (they all touched me in unique ways - some made me laugh out loud, others made me nostalgic and others were to close for comfort, I had to Google the other because she was in my business, for real).
Here is my thematic list
1. Escapism and Survival: Several stories feature characters seeking a better life, and hoping someone will offer that to them - like the young woman hoping marriage abroad will save her or the boy who hopes his childless auntie will adopt him and invite him to live in the US with her and her husband.
2. Family Dynamics: Mostly parent-child relationships as seen in the boy who has to go live with a father he did not grow up knowing and does not want him, and the other one of the mother who believes her daughter is the cause of her depression(ok the book does not say it is depression - but those signs and my clinical psych knowledge did a differential diagnosis). The story of the young woman hoping to go abroad after marriage, goes on to show that the marriage did not work because there were rumors that there was a family’s history of epilepsy and mental illness.
3. Faith and Healing: We all know that an African narrative is not complete without explicitly or implicitly mentioning religion and superstition. The intersection of religion, superstition, and the pursuit of healing is explored in various stories - seen when faith intersects with living with sickle cell anemia, the quest of the lady I mentioned above looking for a cure for her illness, the reason why girl I speak about in the next point gets her hair cut. The funniest for me is the guy who owns a church that never grows and his wife...this story is a summary of 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results'
4. Jealousy: This stuck out for me as a recurring thread, portrayed as both a root cause and symptom of deeper insecurities. Two stories this sticks out are a friend to the pre-teen girl with anemia, who did not get why she got all the 'special treatment', there is also a girl who had amazing hair that got chopped off by another girl because someone said something out of jealousy (this was proper boarding school drama). I know I have blogged about my own jealousy moments, might do a psychological deep dive on this.
5. Coming to age: If we think of coming to age beyond getting to a certain numerical age, then each of these stories has their own coming to age (or as some would say 'coming to Jesus') moments. The one that stands out, and i must say, boldly stands out, is two pre-teen siblings discovering their father's porn stash.
My Take:
The book is a captivating collection of African narratives, exploring the complexities of human experiences. It’s steeped in cultural references that many readers from or familiar with African societies will find deeply relatable.
Would I recommend it?
Absolutely.
Will I reread it?
Definitely
Until the next review...wishing us all a 2025, filled with books, reflections, and growth.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
