Informative, diverse, and highly engaging; a much-needed addition to the realm of mental health.
A comprehensive guide highlighting diverse approaches to mental health and illness and featuring stories of teens and adults.
From biological factors to Indigenous healing practices, Siebert’s guide to navigating mental health is incredibly thorough. After opening with personal anecdotes, Siebert covers the history of attitudes toward and treatment of mental illness, contemporary options for treatment, summaries of common diagnoses, paths to maintaining wellness, and confronting shame and stigma. Throughout Siebert highlights real teens and adults from a variety of backgrounds to help readers understand the material being presented. By addressing the impacts of structural and social inequality as well as biological aspects, Siebert has written a well-rounded guide to understanding mental health and healing in a holistic way. Although aimed at young adults and with a focus on the Canadian context, references to international stories and coverage of issues that transcend national lines, such as the impact on mental health of homophobia, substance abuse, and pressures that leads to challenges with body image, make this broadly relevant for all readers seeking to understand mental illness and the importance of mental health. Filled with captivating full-color graphics that provide information in a visually appealing, bite-sized manner, this book serves as a one-stop guide for the busy teen and busier adult.
Informative, diverse, and highly engaging; a much-needed addition to the realm of mental health. (author’s note, resources, glossary, photo credits, index) (Nonfiction. 12-adult)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4598-1911-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Small but mighty necessary reading.
A miniature manifesto for radical queer acceptance that weaves together the personal and political.
Eli, a cis gay white Jewish man, uses his own identities and experiences to frame and acknowledge his perspective. In the prologue, Eli compares the global Jewish community to the global queer community, noting, “We don’t always get it right, but the importance of showing up for other Jews has been carved into the DNA of what it means to be Jewish. It is my dream that queer people develop the same ideology—what I like to call a Global Queer Conscience.” He details his own isolating experiences as a queer adolescent in an Orthodox Jewish community and reflects on how he and so many others would have benefitted from a robust and supportive queer community. The rest of the book outlines 10 principles based on the belief that an expectation of mutual care and concern across various other dimensions of identity can be integrated into queer community values. Eli’s prose is clear, straightforward, and powerful. While he makes some choices that may be divisive—for example, using the initialism LGBTQIAA+ which includes “ally”—he always makes clear those are his personal choices and that the language is ever evolving.
Small but mighty necessary reading. (resources) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09368-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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