Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9781761170041
Year: 2024
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing


Description:


I want to know what it was like to have crossed into the realm of madness. After all, I did it. I went mad. Why can’t I have the secret knowledge that comes with it?

How do you write a memoir when your memories have been taken? She awakens in hospital, greeted by nurses and patients she doesn’t recognise, but who address her with familiarity. She decides to untangle the clues.

How to Knit a Human is Anna’s quest to find her self and her memory after experiencing psychosis and Electroconvulsive therapy in 2011, at the age of twenty-three. As the memory barriers begin to crumble, Anna weaves her experiences around the gaps of memories that are still not accessible. Anna writes and creates art on her own terms. This book is a reclamation of story and self.

‘How to Knit a Human is a precise and searching memoir that illuminates the fragile balance that can exist between memory and one’s sense of self. The writing reflects superbly on the profound impact of memory loss caused by psychosis and its treatment, and shows us how storytelling can form part of healing through the sharing of experiences and a deeper understanding of them.’ — Kári Gíslason

‘In this wise, wry and moving memoir Anna Jacobson reclaims her self from the institutions that sought to define her. As she asks vital questions about care, memory and inheritance, Jacobson reminds us of the recuperative joy of creative life.’ — Mireille Juchau

‘This book is a revelation. If Leonora Carrington teamed up with Janet Frame you might get something close to the kind, gentle, weird and brutal brilliance