Book Review: A Kind of Madness by Uche Okonkwo – The ‘Madness’ in Everyday Life

Reading Uche Okonkwo's A Kind of Madness during my lunch break - November 2024

Happy New Year Beautiful People,

Welcome to 2025...lovely to see you here.

Since we are still ripe in our resolution making ways, I am starting the year with a book review resolution - to do more book reviews, and to do them immediately after reading the book. 

I read A Kind of Madness by Nigerian author Uche Okonkwo sometime in November. I drafted the review here but did not touch it until today. 

As the title suggests, this book explores different kinds of "madness" through ten essays. 

Before we dive into it, I want to put my mental health advocacy hat on and say that in our field, language matters and words like “madness” specially if used to describe someone or symptoms of mental illness (can) perpetuate stigma. From a literature angle, the title and use of “madness” throughout the book is spot on.

Another thing that is spot on, is how relatable all, I mean all, the stories are. This is a diary of what growing up and experiencing life in Africa is all about. I use the word Africa because though these narratives are based (fictional or not) in Nigeria, they resound to what happens in Kenya - at least from my growing up experiences.

The narratives in the book touch on issues like jealousy, superstition, family dynamics, and survival, sometimes intersecting these topics with aspects of mental health conditions (I will try not to make this a clinical psychology class and stick to reviewing). 

For my review, I will lump the stories into themes; I have failed miserably at ranking them (they all touched me in unique ways - some made me laugh out loud, others made me nostalgic and others were to close for comfort, I had to Google the author because she was in my business, for real)

 Here is my thematic list 

1. Escapism and Survival:

Several stories feature characters seeking a better life, and hoping someone will offer that to them - like the young woman hoping marriage abroad will save her or the boy who hopes his childless auntie will adopt him and invite him to live with her and her husband in the US.

2. Family Dynamics:

Mostly parent-child relationships as seen in the boy who has to go live with a father he did not grow up with, and the other one of the mother who believes her daughter is the cause of her depression (ok the book does not say it is depression - but those signs and my clinical psych knowledge did a differential diagnosis). The story of the young woman hoping to go abroad after marriage mentioned in point 1 above, goes on to show that the marriage did not happen because there were rumors that there was a family’s history of epilepsy and mental illness. 

3. Faith and Healing:

We all know that an African narrative is not complete without explicitly or implicitly mentioning religion and superstition. The intersection of religion, superstition, and the pursuit of healing is explored in various stories - seen when faith intersects with living with sickle cell anemia, the lengths the lady (I presumed has depression) goes to to get a cure for her illness, the reason why the girl I speak about in the next point gets her hair cut. The funniest story for me is one on a guy who owns a church that never grows; this story is a summary of 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results'

4. Jealousy:

This stuck out for me as a recurring thread, portrayed as both a root cause and symptom of deeper insecurities. Two stories that illustrate this are: a friend to the pre-teen girl with anemia, who did not get why she got all the 'special treatment', there is also a girl who had amazing hair that got chopped off by another girl because someone said something out of jealousy (this was proper boarding school drama).

5. Coming to age:

If we think of coming to age beyond getting to a certain numerical age, then each of these stories has its own coming to age (or as some would say 'coming to Jesus') moments. The one that stands out is two pre-teen siblings discovering their father's porn stash.

My Take:

The book is a captivating collection of African narratives, exploring the complexities of human experiences. It has numerous cultural references that many readers from, or familiar with, African societies will find deeply relatable.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely. 

Will I reread it? Definitely

Until the next review...wishing us all a 2025, filled with books, reflections, and growth.  

Sending love and light,

Sitawa