The Books: Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, edited by Nell Casey; ‘Writing the Wrongs of Identity’, by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah

On the essays shelf:

Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, edited by Nell Casey.

Another essay from Unholy Ghost, a collection with different writers writing about their experience with depression.

One of the best essays in the entire collection.

I’ll just admit flat-out that I hadn’t considered the fact that people of color (in this case, a black woman) would have any issues whatsoever in admitting they were depressed (or, no more so than white people would: it’s hard either way). I just figured that depression obviously hits everyone, there’s no reason that white people should be more depressed than black (or vice versa). An essay like this works on multiple levels, and could be considered almost revolutionary, in the fact that it gives voice to a population that has been left out of the literature of depression.

And it was illuminating, too. Now nobody wants to admit they are depressed. Nobody is PSYCHED that they are depressed. But Danquah, in her essay, expresses the reality for black women in Western culture, still racist in many ways. From both sides, I should hasten to mention, and she goes into that in her essay. The racist trope of the “Mammy” still has currency in our culture. Black women are expected to be strong, caretakers, unflappable. They usually play “wise” women in Hollywood (either that, or whores, or nurse-aides. We are just now, in the last 20 or so years, seeing that start to break apart, although we still have a ways to go.) Black women are supposed to be rocks. In their churches, they are the ones who keep things running. They are never allowed a bad day. And if they DO have a bad day, and lose their temper, then suddenly they are the “Angry Black Woman”, another racist trope. Totally hemmed in.

And so: you are a black woman and you struggle with depression, as Danquah does. She makes it clear, in her opening, that she reads books to escape, learn, grow. She doesn’t need to read books that reflect her experience. That’s not why she reads. But it’s different for her in terms of depression literature. There, she is looking for herself. She is looking for validation that she is not alone. There must be other black women who suffer in a similar way. But book after book is written by white women, Jewish women, all who seem to live in Boston or its suburbs (she’s very funny about that: “What IS it about Boston??”). And so what happens, overall, is that she started to feel isolated (and isolation is one of the defining characteristics of depression, anyway – but in her case it was exacerbated).

She details a couple of anecdotes that are chilling and eloquent about the overall reaction of well-meaning people (look out for those well-meaners, they’re the worst) when she would tell them she was writing a book about black women and depression. One white woman says, laughing, “… when black women start going on Prozac, you know the whole world is falling apart.” She clearly meant this as a compliment: You black women are so strong, you are known for your strength, God help us if you admit you are weak. Can you see how harmful that attitude is? The pressure it puts on black women? Danquah also experienced similar reactions, however, from the black community. She would get hostile/dismissive reactions from black women. One black woman said to her, “Depression? I don’t think they were talking about us. That is not a luxury we can afford.” One other black woman said to her:

“That’s all about white folks who don’t have any real problems, so they have to create stuff to complain about. If black women started taking to their beds and crying about postpartum depression, who’d be left to play nanny to all those white babies?”

This leaves no space, none whatsoever, for a black woman to admit she struggles.

Interestingly enough, while she was an MFA student at Bennington, Danquah met Robert Bly, who is, perhaps, the apex of a certain kind of White Male. All kinds of stereotypes and preconceived notions apply there as well, something Danquah was well aware of. One day, she sat with Robert Bly at his table in the cafeteria. She had never met him. One of her classmates introduced her and said, “Meri is writing a book on black women and depression.” Danquah writes:

Robert Bly looked over at me again and said, without hesitation, sarcasm, or irony, “Whew. That’s going to be one really long book.”

I love this. I love that he got it. Danquah writes:

Based on his frank reaction, Robert Bly obviously had some idea of what is hidden behind that myth.

Danquah speaks of the pressure in the black community to “keep it real”, which means all sorts of different things, but in her case, she felt it meant ignoring the warning calls of real illnesses, such as postpartum depression, other kinds of depression – an unwillingness and inability to distinguish illness of a psychological nature. This is deep stuff. The essay could only be written by a black woman, who knows this stuff from the inside, and has the writing skill to parse it all out.

This is a not-to-be-missed essay and should be read in its entirety. The excerpt can’t do the whole thing justice. You get the sense, as you read it, that this really is an act of service, and not in the “Mammy” sense, but in the compassionate and courageous sense. She is willing to speak the truth, she is willing to put it out there and risk cruel comments from pretty much everyone who do not want to hear the message.

She has struggles with her depression, as a black woman, that white depressed people just do not encounter.

Great great essay. Here’s an excerpt.

Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, edited by Nell Casey: ‘Writing the Wrongs of Identity’, by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah

As a black woman struggling with depression, I don’t know which I fear more: the identity of illness or the identity of wellness. One might imagine that the identity of wellness would, naturally, be the more desirable of the two. But that’s usually the problem with desire: what you see is not necessarily what you get. The societal images of black female wellness, as evidenced (still) in present-day popular culture, have nothing at all to do with being well. Far from it. They have everything to do with the lies of history – a history that, invariably, has been shaped, created, or informed by the poisonous ideology of racism.

In those lies black women are strong. Strong enough to work two jobs while single-handedly raising twice as many children. Black women can cook, they can clean, they can sew, they can type, they can sweep, they can scrub, they can mop, and they can pray. Black women can fuck, too. They are rarely romanticized, just oversexualized. Hookers, whores, Thursday-night concubines, and sultry-voiced back-alley blues club singers with Venus Hottentot hips. Either that or they are desexualized, just straight-up masculinized, mean-faced and hardened. Whatever the case, black women are always doing. They are always servicing everyone’s needs, except their own. Their doing is what defines their being. And this is supposed to be wellness.

Not that the identity of illness is any better. Its only appeal is the allowance for vulnerability. You are able to need others, to invite their assistance, to accept their love – the catch is that you also have to be fragile. Anybody who’s ever really been sick knows that the tolerance level for illness is low. Once the get-well roses begin to wilt, everything changes. Compassion and caretaking turn into burdens and vulnerability becomes weakness.

If the illness is something as nebulous as depression, folks begin to treat it like a character flaw: you are lazy, incapable, selfish, self-absorbed. The list is pretty much the same regardless of one’s race. But race cannot and should not be disregarded: there is no room in the black female identity for weakness, laziness, incapability, selfishness, self-absorption, or even depression.

If I were to say that reading all the books by those depressed white people did not have a profound impact on my ability to come to terms with my own battle against depression, it would be disingenuous. Each one was like a mirror. Even if the external reflection looked nothing at all like me, what I saw of the internal reality was an accurate representation. The disease was the same, the symptoms were the same. The resulting confusing and hurt were the same.

None of that was enough though. I craved wholeness. I wanted to recognize all of me. Yet no matter how much these authors’ confessions assuaged the discomfort I felt within, their stories could only meet the marrow and bone. They could never move outward and touch the flesh, the blackness that dictated the world in which I existed. What they could, and did, do was inspire me to write my own story. In writing that story I began, finally, to see why voices like mine were all but absent in discussions about depression.