By Kemi Seriki
“Truth and morning became light with time” African proverb
During the pandemic lockdown, I listened to one of my subscribed podcasts, Come Through with Rebecca Carrol, and Bassey Ikpi was a guest in one of her episodes. Bassey was invited to the show to talk about her recently published book. I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying is a New York Times bestseller where Bassey transcribed her life story as a child growing up in Nigeria and America. The story was remarkably raw and honest as her memory drifted between the truth and twisted memory. With her unique storytelling talent, Bassey broke down the misrepresentation of mental illness and shared a beautiful story of a courageous woman. In the book, she explores her childhood experience in Nigeria, relocating to the US with her mother to join her father, her understanding of racial identity, to the reality of living with mental illness. The book was beautifully written and creatively assembled, and one would not have thought it was collections of essays accumulated into a book.
Bassey was born in Nigeria to Nigerian parents from Cross River State, and at the age of four, she relocated with her mother to join her father in Oklahoma. From her early childhood through adulthood, Bassey lived with havocs of emotional turmoil, cycling between a high level of euphoria and a lower level of deep depression, which are the symptoms of her bipolar disorder. With such admirable vulnerability, she writes about the confusion and embarrassment she experienced due to her diagnosis and her family processing her mental illness diagnoses. Bassey allows readers to explore her life as she wrestles with mental illness and balances with what she perceived as a “normal” living.
Bassey was battling mental illness independently without her parents’ awareness that her behavior was signs of mental illness. As Bassey wrote, “By far, the lie I tell the most is “I’m okay” even though her family, whom she has lived with most of her life, could not recognize that she was not okay and she could not bring herself to tell her family the truth. Bassey assured the readers that her parents did not encourage her to lie, but she learned to lie to her parents to “avoid punishment and to secure rewards” by telling her parents what she knew they wanted to hear instead of telling the truth. She used this technic to maintain a harmonious relationship with a mother that may also be battling intergenerational trauma. As I read the book, the phrase “What Happened to You” came to mind. I questioned the possibility of intergenerational trauma on the maternal side of the family that may have resulted in the mother’s coldness towards her daughter and probably towards other family members. Bassey Ikpi grew up in a home where her father speaks positively about his family, and the mother, on the other hand, gave an undesirable picture of her family background.
Intergenerational Trauma
According to the experts, intergenerational trauma does not dissipate, and it could be transferred or transmitted from one generation to another if it is not addressed or treated. Bassey gave an account of the painful relationship she had with her mother and the mother’s flawed relationship with her grandmother. Her account provided a glimpse of the strained relationship between her mother and her grandmother, reflecting on the complexity relating to the mother and daughter bond. Bassey describes her mother as kind and beautiful, but she “seemed angry all the time.” With rapid changes in mother’s mood from happy and smiling mother to “the sullen mother “who could hardly speak to her daughter or acknowledge her presence for days due to what I believe was mother’s distresses. Bassey would rather have a warm relationship with her mother, but it appears impossible. As a result, she became a performer in maintaining a harmonious relationship with her mother or avoiding her mother. The question is, should an immigrant child who is still navigating childhood in unfamiliar territories carry such a burden?
African Parent Stance & Challenges as Immigrants
Some specific attributes are common in the African parenting style. Parents may be emotionally distant, may not openly discuss family issues, or discuss their emotional struggles with the children. Sometimes, it is done to protect the children by not burdening them emotionally. Some parents may feel that children may not understand what the adult is battling. Many parents may not recognize that children feel the burden of emotional distress through nonverbal communication such as facial expression, gestures, tone of voice, passive-aggressive behavior towards those around, etc. These examples of negative body language may send the wrong message to the children, and according to experts in child development, this approach may affect a child’s emotional development. Children emulate what they see, and they would replicate the same negative communication style to the world around them.
In the case of Ikpi’s family, the agony the mother may be feeling may not only have come from her past traumatic experience, but the challenges many immigrants face in their new home may have contributed to her emotional battles. Even though the mother and the father may be present at home, immigrant families still have some sense of loss from lack of extended family support with familiar values system to raising their children in a society that the value system is quite different from their homeland. The demand of acculturation into unfamiliarity may be stressful for many immigrant families. It comes from balancing between the dominant culture and traditional values. Experiencing discrimination and social marginalization may significantly impact parental psychological welfare. For example, Bassey talked about the emotional bankruptcy her mother demonstrates after coming home from long day work and how the challenges of dealing with unruly co-workers and patients affect her relationship with her family.
Immigrants face multiple and intersectionality of social labeling, which in many cases project negative views of immigrants’ community. As immigrants of African origin, we encounter and experience racist abuse and discrimination based on the color of our skin. Other biases or discrimination we experience include gender identity, religious background, language barrier, humiliation based on our African identity, xenophobia (fear or hatred of what is seen as strange or foreign). While Bassey’s mother gives so much of herself to survive and to provide a decent life for her family, there is an emotional cost that comes with it. In the process of living and surviving, one may become psychologically drained, and nothing is left for your family.
Teachable moment
When I read a book, I look for a teachable moment or the lesson I learned from the reading that I could share with others. The chapter Bassey titled Yaka documented the painful relationship with her mother and mother’s display of preferences or favoritism towards her siblings due in part to educational achievements. Bassey dropped out of college due to her mental illness, and her mother could not empathize with her daughter because of her lack of understanding of her daughter’s predicament or the challenges of mental illness. Reminiscing into the past when she was nine years old, Bassey remembered that mother smiled and how mother was proud of books she read and how she memorized and recited “birds of all fifty states.” Ironically, the following chapter is titled “Becoming a Liar.” Bassey wrote these powerful statements in the chapter.
“I learned how to take the truth and bend it like light through a prism.”
“I learned to lie to safe others.”
“Lies are how I keep breathing.”
“I edit conversation and situation as they are happening.”
“They say I make myself a victim. They are wrong. I give myself the survivor’s edit.”
Our children may lie to us when what parents seek is perfection and when we model such behavior ourselves. We praise a child whom we perceived as the parents’ pride to showcase such a child to other family members and the community at large as our success story. Our children’s success becomes what defines our status within the community. Our children who may not have graduated from college but learn a trade, a college dropout like Bassey, or those who graduated college with unpopular specialty may be seen as a disgrace to the family or the community at large. We compare siblings by saying if you could only be like your brother or sister who graduated college and become a lawyer, engineer or accountant, or doctor because to us, those areas of specialization are associated with prestige and wealth. We tend to see two categories as an accomplishment, which would provide a fulfilling life for our children. No wonder we place so much pressure on our children without looking at and celebrating their unique talent. We have to start recognizing that living a meaningful life is more than just a job title and material wealth. We need to acknowledge that living a meaning life is knowing what is vital to an individual by focusing on simplicity and honesty. We should embrace individual passion and life purpose and, most importantly, raise children who will have compassion towards themselves and others.
Still Thriving
An African proverb says, “however tall a tree may be, it can never prevent the sun from shining.” Bassey Ikpi may not have graduated from university as her parents would have hoped. She may have sustained traumatic childhood experiences partially due to her undiagnosed mental illness. She had to navigate two worlds as a child of a Nigerian immigrant and as a black female in America. She grew up in a home where the parents may not know about helping her navigate the two worlds due to their immigrant experience. With all these hindrances, Bassey Ikpi continues to strive. Bassey is an award-winning spoken word artist, and she appeared on HBO Def Poetry five times. She wrote an award-winning memoir that became a New York Times bestseller with great reviews. Bassey tells her story to dismantle the negative stigma and shame attached to mental illness. She gave a complete portrait of her life with profound vulnerability, and she discusses her family dynamic as a child of African immigrants growing up in America. I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying should be assigned as a book to read for community discussion or forums within the African immigrant community. In 2011, Bassey founded The Siwe Project, named after the daughter of her friend who suffered from anxiety and depression and later committed suicide at the age of 15. The program encourages and inspires those who have a mental illness to seek help and manage their disease so that they, too, can continue to thrive.
fantastic