This World Mental Health Day, we’re highlighting powerful books that shatter the stigma surrounding mental health and its impact on our lives, whether it be at home, school, or the workplace. Each of these picks takes its own unique approach, diving into the cultural perspectives, personal experiences, and the diverse challenges associated with mental health. Whether you’re interested in different perspectives or simply new ways to talk about difficult emotional experiences, there’s a book here for you. Come join in on the conversation!
Sunrise over Half-Built Houses: Love, Longing and Addiction in Suburbia by Erin Steele (Caitlin Press)
Step into the life of Erin Steele, a shy teenager coming of age in a seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood in the early 2000s. On the surface, she’s a typical student with a boyfriend and a coffee shop job. But beneath it all, she’s skipping class, struggling with her feelings for girls, and becoming dangerously dependent on pills.
As Erin spirals into addiction, her quest for identity reveals hidden secrets in big houses and wild parties in the woods, all set against the backdrop of relentless West Coast rains.
Written with searing honesty, Sunrise over Half-Built Houses digs down past pleasantries and manicured lawns, through the sucking hole of addiction, then further still to reveal a place where we can all see ourselves and each other more clearly.
Out Now!
All in Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women’s Mental Health by Misty Pratt (Greystone Books)
Over the past decade, mood disorders have skyrocketed among women, who are twice as likely to be diagnosed as men. Women living at intersections of racial, economic, and other identities face additional barriers. How can we pinpoint what’s wrong with women’s mental health and what needs to change?
In All in Her Head, science writer Misty Pratt embarks on a crucial investigation to answer this question, painting a picture of a system that is failing women on multiple levels. Pratt, who shares her own history of mental illness, explores the stereotypes that have shaped how we understand and treat women’s distress, from the ancient Greek concept of “hysteria” to today’s self-help solutions.
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Bloom Across Canada: 50 Inspiring Conversations by Beka Shane Denter (Heritage House)
Bloom Across Canada is a fascinating collection of fifty interviews and portraits that celebrates diversity, creativity, and entrepreneurship, while discussing mental health and well-being. Through insightful questions and thoughtful, nuanced answers, the fifty interviews in this beautiful collection paint a vivid portrait of talent and ingenuity from Canadian women and non-binary people that represent different backgrounds and walks of life from coast to coast.
Among those featured are: Tene Ward, ballerina with the National Ballet of Canada; singer/songwriter Kellie Loder; Peace Akintade, Saskatchewan’s former Youth Poet Laureate; Marika Sila, Inuit actress, hoop dancer, fire performer, and motivational speaker; and Amy Robichaud, CEO at Mothers Matter Canada and former director at Dress for Success Vancouver.
Out October 22, 2024!
Jump Scare by Daniel Zomparelli (Talonbooks)
At once raw and skillful, painful and funny, the poems in Jump Scare dig deep into mental health, neurodivergence, grief, dreams, monstrosity, sexuality, pop culture, queer consumer culture, and the commodification of identity. Jump Scare tackles isolation and loss head-on and, with wry humour, seeks to answer the question about how to position ourselves in our lonely, scary, compelling lives.
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I Hate Parties by Jes Battis (Nightwood Editions)
Social anxiety runs through I Hate Parties like a current. This poetry collection offers the B-side of growing up queer, autistic, and nonbinary. From difficult desires, panic attacks, and environmental sensitivities, Battis weaves ’90s metaphors with current discussions of neurodiversity and trans rights in Canada as they ruminate between past and present like a cat refusing to settle. I Hate Parties guides us through all the best and worst parties of our lives—to the secret room beyond, where being awkward is the one and only dress code.
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Mad Sisters by Susan Grundy (Ronsdale Press)
In 1962, eight-year-old Nancy saves her little sister, Susie, from drowning in a swimming pool. Five years later, Nancy is diagnosed with a severe mental illness and Susie embarks on a lifelong journey to repay the debt, a boundless mission that drags her into a different kind of deep water. Mad Sisters explores the devastating shifts in a family struck by mental illness—following author Susan Grundy’s jarring progression from a free-spirited little sister into a trapped caregiver. Through her journey, she exposes the gaps in mental health care systems and the conflicting emotions involved in caregiving.
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Grazie by Lucia Frangione (Talonbooks)
When Graziana’s violent stalker dies in a car crash, the shocking news sends her to the hospital. Now, her spirited eight-year-old daughter, Hazel, becomes the ward of Grandpa “Grumpy” Herman, while Graziana embarks on a crucial journey of healing—a pilgrimage biking the famous Via Francigena in Italy.
A gritty and spiritual tale of transformation, forgiveness, and rebirth, Grazie takes us from Red Deer to Rome and from the Amazon to Andromeda. Both brutal and tender, it explores what it means to connect with oneself, family, history, culture, and the essence of existence.
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I Feel That Way Too by jaz papadopoulos (Nightwood Editions)
A critical look at how sexual assault trials impact survivors, I Feel That Way Too is a collection of experiments in narrative poetry. It weaves through past and present, drawing together art, philosophy, the Jian Ghomeshi trial, and childhood memory to interrogate how media and social power structures sustain patriarchal ideologies. These poems are lyrical and meditative explorations of a survivor trying to make sense of the nervous system in battle and in recovery.
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Dare to Bird by Melissa Hafting (Rocky Mountain Press)
Written by Melissa Hafting—an ethical, passionate, and respected birder, photographer, and mentor—Dare to Bird is a photographic journey exploring the joy and healing power of birds. Showcasing some of Melissa’s most stunning bird images from the continental United States, Hawaii, and Canada, Dare to Bird explores how Haftings’ love for birding has helped shape who she is and has helped with her mental health, along with enabling her to cope with the difficult aspects of grief and loss after the death of her mother and father.
Both birding and photography have allowed her to foster meaningful connections with young birders from diverse backgrounds, along with the conservation community, eco-travel advocates, rare bird enthusiasts, and ethical wildlife viewing practitioners, in order to preserve bird habitats that are constantly under threat.
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