CALENDAR OF EVENTS
A curated listing of international critical psychology conferences and events. Email us at [email protected] if you’d like to suggest an event.
Premiere Launch of Bonnie Burstow’s Anti-ECT Novel The Other Mrs. Smith
November 3, 2017
Premiere Launch of bonnie Burstow’s anti-ECT novel the Other Mrs. Smith (Nov 3, 5:30, Nexus Lounge, 12th Floor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor West, Toronto.
Come to the premiere launch of Bonnie Burstow’s latest novel, The Other Mrs. Smith. The event will include readings from the novel, talk by Bonnie, ECT survivor speak out—and more. This is good opportunity to connect, to learn more about ECT, to start putting ECT back on the political agenda, and to “have a good read”.
The official blurb for the novel is as follows:
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This penetrating novel traces the life experiences of a once highly successful woman who falls prey to electroshock and subsequently struggles, partly successfully, partly in vain, to piece back together her life. Naomi, the protagonist, suffers enormous memory loss; additionally, an estrangement from her family of origin that she has no way to wrap her mind around. The novel begins with her wandering the corridor of St. Patricks-St Andrews Mental Health Centre (St. Pukes) faced with the seemingly impossible challenge of coming to terms with the damage done her, as well uncovering the hidden details of her life. It moves back and forth in space and time, between a relatively happy childhood in the legendary north-end Winnipeg of the mid-1900s and post-ECT adulthood in Toronto. An exceptionally kind man named Ger who befriends Naomi comes to suspect that important pieces of the puzzle of what befell her lurk beneath the surface of writing in a binder of hers, which comes to be known as Black Binder Number Three. What Naomi progressively comes to do, often with Ger’s help and just as often with the help of a very different and eerily similar sister named Rose, is find ways to do justice to her life and to the various people in it. Filled with a vast array of colourful and insightful characters from a variety of communities--TorontoÂąs Kensington Market of the 1970s, the 1970’s trans community, north-end Winnipeg Jewry, and the ingenious and frequently hilarious mad community—this novel sensitizes us to the horror of electroshock, takes us to new levels in our understanding of what it means to be human, and, in the process, leads us to question the very concept of normalcy.  Â
Premiere Launch of Bonnie Burstow’s Anti-ECT Novel The Other Mrs. Smith