2024~X12 Sure, I'll Join Your Cult

In the past few years, it seems like these chaotic, comedic memoirs by people with mental health issues have become quite popular.  There is something about them, though, that I find off-putting.  In reflecting about why, I think it is not so much that I don't think you can joke about serious mental illness so much as that I think there should be some moments where there is an acknowledgement that things are not all humorous--that the hospitalizations, addict​ions, and repercussions of her actions have had negative impacts not only on her, but on her family.  She completely glosses over the many ways in which her situation has harmed her parents and sister, not to mention the other people in her life.  Humor might be her way of coping with this, but I felt like at some point in the book, there should have been a pause to honor the things that were hard instead of just jumping from joke to joke.

I will say, though, that as a child who grew up learning the Suzuki music method, the chapter on the cult of Suzuki was amazing.  I had as negative an experience with it as she did and despite having spent a lot of time trying to dissect the many ways in which I was harmed by my time in that program, which was like ten years from 3-13, I had not come up with many of the observations that she had about her time there, which was even more than mine.  I found her analysis of Suzuki music as a cult to be spot on and that it likely impacted me in similar ways it impacted her.  I liked this chapter so much, it almost warranted making the book a recommendation, but ultimately it wasn't enough to save it.

​Not recommended. 

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