Girl, Interrupted is a short memoir focusing on the nearly two years Susanna Kaysen spent in a psychiatric hospital. Kaysen is initially admitted by a new doctor for a “break” but her stay turns into something more permanent and she is eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. While her story seems almost unbelievable at times, as well as a gross misuse of power by her doctors and parents, she posts her medical charts as evidence to her tenure at McLean Hospital. It has been several years since I have […]
Poems; Girls; Heights; Faces
Long Way Down – 5/5 To paraphrase Jason Reynolds in an interview he gives at the end of the book, this is a combination of “Boyz in the Hood” and “A Christmas Carol.” As with other Jason Reynolds novels, there’s a central conflict between what a character feels is the right thing to do based on his lived experience, the implicit messages that happen around him, the images, his history, and lots of other coded and secretive influences versus the on the paper ethics of […]
So much better than the film
When Susanna Kaysen was 18, she went to see a new psychiatrist for a conversation after what appears to have been a suicide attempt. She swallowed a large amount of sleeping pills, then regretted her decision and wandered out into the street to get help. The psychiatrist claimed to have spoken to and evaluated Ms. Kaysen for more than three hours, Ms. Kaysen herself claims the meeting was barely half an hour. The end result was nonetheless that she ended up committed to McLean Hospital, […]