I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying: Essays Audiobook (Free)

In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying Bassey Ikpi explores her life-as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black girl, a slam poet, a mom, a daughter, an artist-through the zoom lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her extraordinary memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of your brain and normalcy as Bassey bares her very own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy.

A Bitch Magazine Most Anticipated Reserve of 2019 • A Bustle 21 New about I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Laying: Essays Memoirs WHICH WILL Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You • A Web publishers Weekly Springtime Preview Selection • A POWER Lit 48 Books by Women and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019 • A Bookish Best non-fiction of Summertime Selection

‘We won’t think or discuss mental wellness or normalcy the same after scanning this momentous art object moonlighting like a colossal collection of essays.” -Kiese Laymon, writer of Large

From her early childhood in Nigeria through her adolescence in Oklahoma, Bassey Ikpi lived with a tumult of emotions, cycling between extreme euphoria and deep depression-sometimes inside the course of an individual day. By enough time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken term artist and vacationing with HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, channeling her existence into artwork. But under the façade from the assured performer, Bassey’s mental health is at a precipitous decrease, culminating in a breakdown that led to hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II.

In I’m Telling the reality, But I’m Lying, Bassey Ikpi breaks open our knowledge of mental health giving us intimate usage of her own. Exploring shame, confusion, medicine, and family along the way, Bassey talks about how mental wellness impacts every part of our lives-how we may actually others, and more importantly to ourselves-and problems our preconception in what it means to be ‘normal.’ Viscerally fresh and honest, the effect can be an exploration of the stories we show ourselves to make sense of who we are-and the ways, as honest as we try to end up being, each one of these tales may also be a lie.