Schizophrene

by Bhanu Kapil

Schizophrene traces the intersections of migration and mental illness as they unfold in post-Partition diasporic communities. Bhanu Kapil brings forward the question of a healing narrative and explores trauma and place through a somatic, poetic and cross-cultural psychiatric enquiry. Who was here? Who will never be here? Who has not yet arrived and never will? Towards an arrival without being, this notebook-book returns a body to a site, the shards re-forming in mid-air: for an instant.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Essays, Psychology, History

70 pages, Paperback

First published September 19, 2011

About the author

Bhanu Kapil is a British-Indian poet who lives in the United States and the United Kingdom. She is the author of a number of full-length works of poetry/prose, including The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works, 2006), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), Schizophrene (Nightboat, 2011), Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat, 2015), and How to Wash a Heart (Liverpool University Press, 2020). Kapil taught for many years at Naropa University and Goddard College. In 2019, she was awarded the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. During this time, she completed her first full-length poetry collection to be published in the United Kingdom, How to Wash a Heart (2020). Kapil received the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry in 2020.

Reviews

[spoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book three times before coming to terms with the very loud and expansive, often un-holding place of blank page that permeated this text. I read it three times and by the last time fell into its rhythm, the entire book held in the arc of the throw of the writer throwing this text, its before-body of manuscript, into a snow-covered garden. After the second time reading through it, I transcribed much of the book down onto a separate piece of paper, so that I could read it in an arrangement that felt more palatable to the way my eyes moved over a text. It was only then, in that contrast, that I could understand the way this book held so much. That there was no possible way, no way at all, that all of this would be able to fit, without all those spaces, between. Time is weird and I'm tired. Thank you always Bhanu Kapil.

[Gloria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her preface is what drew me into buying the book and eventually reading it (I bought two copies, based on it. Also, I didn't know if it would be hard to acquire outside of specialty stores/ book fairs).

The preface and what follows afterwards was an incredibly strong synthesis of intellectual and spiritual ideas. Her voice literally falls off the page with brilliance and heart.

I come from a minority immigrant family, so a lot of the symptoms she describes apply very much to my own family. (I actually bought a copy for a cousin I believe might benefit from reading about the writer's own healing process related to schizophrenia)

Her emphasis of the relationship between mental illnesses and racism/ being a minority is brilliant and courageous, all the more so since she uses poetry to bridge the gap.

"the exchange of devotional objects was just as effective for non-white subjects as anti-psychotic medication"


If I ever have a bamd, I'm naming it "Schizophrene" :)

[Ashwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It probably took me less than 2 pages to be enamored with Schizophrene and I turned the last page quite in awe of Bhanu Kapil.

[Yasmine Kherfi · Rating 3 out of 5]

kapil explores the connections between disease, racism, and historical trauma through somatic writing. love how this short piece of work outlines how trauma in the body/spirit can be, and often is a result of political and colonial violence. kapil can creatively address these complex themes without having to explicitly explain them or academify them. a mode of storytelling I wasn't familiar with. to be honest - didn't grasp the style easily, but it left me thinking about the power of writing not only as an opportunity to experiment and subvert traditionally accepted styles of storytelling, but also as a way/tool for collective healing.

[Gabby Grinaway · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always an amazing work. This is my second time reading it through and while it’s a quick read it’s definitely crucial it’s read more than once with all of the layers this book contains. Kapil tackles ideas of racism, mental illness, the writing process and in turn the various processes of perceiving the world and the way in which those perceptions affect us. The book starts with a final draft of the book being thrown into Kapil’s garden and left to rot. Then book is then carefully pieced back together and rewritten in a way that really allows Kapil to get down to the roots of the issues she aims to tackle in this book, specifically as a women.

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is exquisite.

"It is psychotic to draw a line between two places.

It is psychotic to go.

It is psychotic to look.

Psychotic to live in a different country forever.

Psychotic to lose something forever."

[Carolyn Hembree · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In a book without purpose/with a dead start. But with the body displaying signs of early spring: pink bits sensitive to being touched, like a Jain woman crossing the street in her linen mask and with her pole."

[Sneha Vaidya · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It is psychotic to draw a line between two places”
I am far from being able to truly comprehend the literary color of this so I will be rereading this many times but I am in awe of bhanu kapil and her ability to produce a writing made up of fragments that can feel devotional, in a way. And treat the violence of Partition from an angle which I rarely see

Reminds me that writing can be somatic, writing IS somatic

“grammar is emotional” she says in the acknowledgments at the end. Usually, it bothers me when grammar is just kind of slapped around, especially in diaspora poetry. Usually it’s for the sake of itself, and I strongly dislike that..I find it hard to read a lot of diaspora poetry, to be honest. A lot of popular authors seem to be more interested in a politics full of linear power binaries, rather than complicating their identities, their place in the world as children of immigrants living in first world countries, etc. and it ends up being very disappointing to read. I’m not being very clear, maybe I’ll come back to rewrite this and say what I mean more loudly, but the politics of Kapils writing is very clear, and intentionally tries to unsettle the more common narratives around immigration…diasporic nostalgia…. national spaces vs. culture..

and I feel like i’ve barely scratched the surface and this was a very short read so yeah

[Brian Andrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and scattered, yet all encompassing, narrative about the effects immigration has on one’s mental health. I appreciate the interior look of a social issue as well as the use of colors to describe metaphysics.

Most of the time reading this book, I was confused. It was only until I finished a section that I was able to process what I read. Overall, this book is a cool experimental experience.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

"NOON: This is the same day but later. Minutes scatter, making a pure unmarked rectangle, like a man-made lake or reservoir that wasn’t there thirty years ago and thus not recorded in the document of place."

[jada alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3

[Emma Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don’t think i vibed with this — sometimes it’s hard to get fully into a text that you only have a few days with for classes

[Ayesha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creative.

[zakariah · Rating 1 out of 5]

omg bham new st kfc mention slaay

[Jas Shirrefs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh, frenetic and so many kids of clever.

[Shams Alkamil · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is poetry that is hard to read, not because it isn't beautiful, but because the jargon and endless imagery makes it difficult to compromise on a flow needed to understand the book.

I will be honest and say: the first few pages were confusing. I didn't understand until I went to read the pre-word: this book is a collection of journal entries that were abandoned by the author and reconstructed. It also hit me I didn't understand the beginning pages because the book is partially written from a perspective of schizophrenic psychosis. The point is not to fully comprehend what is going on until the author emerges from this.

The prose is beautiful, one line in particular hit me. "Sometimes the English I get back is crisp, more accurate and emotional than the English I would use". This "english" refers to the inner voice: whether from psychosis or an alternate being. It felt like an acceptance of mental health struggles, but also a detachment.

Throughout the chapters, Kapil switches back between her life back "home" and in the West. There are tales of Hindus and Muslims both struggling post-partition; the author remarks on how psychosis is the result of the following:
1. refusing to submit to a time of violence
2. leaving a place you "submitted [to]"

She says the subsequent scenario "makes the involuntary arrival a stressor for psychosis". The mere act of forced migration may trigger inter-generational trauma, we know this as immigrants, it is time the Western world accepts this as truth.

Overall, I recommend this book for its vulnerability about schizophrenia and how it ties to immigrant/refugee experience. However, be warned, it is difficult to comprehend.

[Book Riot Community]

Bhanu Kapil’s beautiful, haunting books push the boundaries of what it’s possible to do with language, asking big and small questions about identity, diaspora, and loss. Each of her books is a hybrid, living somewhere between poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, and you can feel your own world getting bigger while you read them. (A handful of writers including Kate Zambreno, Sofia Samatar, and Jenny Zhang recently discussed her work over at the Believer.) — Sarah McCarry



From The Best Books We Read In February: http://bookriot.com/2015/03/02/riot-r...

[Erin Lyndal Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I wanted to love it. I wanted to be thrilled about it. And there are a lot of gorgeous passages and turns of phrase. I just didn't feel like the book accomplishes all the things it sets out to do. A lot of the fragments feel unnecessary/irrelevant. And if part of the project was to use schizophrenia as a metaphor for a split cultural identity, I don't think she went far enough. I'll reread later and see if it was just my state of mind when reading.

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still don't think I've grasped it to a sufficient degree, but I do know that the space usage and word choices are wonderful. The 'vertigo' page is one of my favorites. I believe that it's meant to be experienced, rather than 'comprehended,' and it's certainly an experience.

Edit:
A good one to revisit later, especially given the current situation in Kashmir.

[Jai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed this book for Lantern Review here: http://www.lanternreview.com/blog/201...

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and thought that Kapil's use of physical space and displacement made the narrative feel like an interdisciplinary collage of sorts. Will definitely be reading more.

[Acacia · Rating 1 out of 5]

this WAS AWFUL!!!!!!!!

[el · Rating 2 out of 5]

"6. Vertigo

A ghost mutates through intensity, gathering enough
energy to touch you through your thin blouse, or your
leggings, or your scarf.

A ghost damages the triptych of ancestors composed of
descending, passive, and synthetic scraps.

But what if the ghost is empty because it's making a space
for you?"

"7. Partition

One day per room. It's raining.

My mother's mother put a hand over my mother's mouth,
but my mother saw, peeking between the slats of the cart,
row after row of women tied to the border trees. 'Their
stomachs were cut out,' said my mother. This story, which
really wasn't a story but an image, was repeated to me at many
bedtimes of my own childhood.

Sometimes I think it was not an image at all but a way of
conveying information.

This is something that happens in the second room, in
the city that the room belongs to, and it functions (the
information) as a grave.


12:20 on the third day; notes from the glass coffin.
Schizophrene.

Because it is psychotic not to know where you are in a
national space."

"In my cupped hands, I held a vegetal structure bulky with
dried marigolds and tiny pink roses, knotted with red
cotton thread."

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

a series of small, subtle touches. a book thrown into the snow, a duplicate, and only the words not rubbed away with water are legible. "immigrant. nothing happens. immigrant." "what makes the city touch itself everywhere at once..." a city of green, of grid, and a woman walking towards a point, a woman sitting on a towel beneath a tree. "is it psychotic to draw a line between two places." "fragments attract each other - I stroke them with my finger so they scatter then relax." I hold onto the image of pink smears across the sky, and tree branches, and maps as short term memory, empty ghosts. "I cannot make the map of healing and so this is the map of what happened in a particular country on a particular day." "sometimes I think it was not an image at all but a way of conveying information."

[m_n_li · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turmeric plant, lemon tree, amrooth tree, pomegranate tree, mango tree, mint, tulsi, and some ragged flowering herbs. Green chili? Gold flower? But they can't translate and do not know the word in Hindi. A girl and two boys, the daughter and grandsons of the priest in the garage, with whom we share this kitchen garden. At the end of the street is a Shiva temple. Its massive Shivling towers above the Le Corbusier vibe of this Asian city; a black geo-oblong with three white stripes on what I suddenly understand to be a "forehead." What is it? 'It's the unseen face of god." Sometimes the English I get back is crisp, more accurate and emotional than the English I would use.

(can't remember the first time i read this, but just grabbed it off the bookshelf and read the entire thing again, this time aloud. rewards silence and thought.)

[William Jeanes Memorial Library]

If anything, this poetry book was really smart. It took me a while to comprehend what was connecting to the theme of schizophrenia. It can be a little difficult when reading because it is a jumpy read. However, theme really ties itself together with the speaker’s perspective on racism in their community. I think I was also impressed by the writer’s way of creating the book. From the start, Bhanu Kapil lets readers know that this poems became the way they were after Kapil through the original book into the garden and let it sit for months. Yet the details that remain are vivid and something haunting.
-Patron J.L.

[D]

Alan G reco. Will probably need to revisit. Did not enjoy as much as I did humanimal but did appreciate this place kapil inhabits where writing is also performance art, and the idea of the book as a series of light, impersonal touches of the kind signaled in the afterword as healing to schizophrenia. I read the afterword first and was glad I did, as it gave me some hints in terms of how to read this. Beautiful images, which didn’t cohere, which i guess is the point but which made it hard for me to latch onto much.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kapil's book, which she admits in the end, expresses itself more a series of light touches, still feels rooted to the concept of uprootedness. The sensation of living in any city, of living in a city where you feel you are constantly apart from the city while you are also an unmistakable part of the city. It makes living in a city unsettled. And yet, for my reading, Kapil indicates that living in a city is already a series of oversaturated sensations.

[T Brown]

Re-read from several years ago. Kapil's brilliance is crystalline and I am thinking about the prismatic poetics here. How situating a topic creates a possible cataclysm of thought which parallels colonial effect. Meaning it is not a clean cut beam, but a spiky sort of slime snowfall. Procedural griding/documentation; imaging/conveying of information. Map, window, table, day, space. Where are you in a national space?

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

On a quest to clean up my never-ending TBR list, I came upon this book that had been there for over 10 years. I somehow found it online, and realized that poetry - which I generally avoid - had unintentionally become my genre of choice for 2026. I'm not entirely sure that I grasped anything from this book, and actually think that it went in one end and out the other. However, perhaps that is the point in a book about migration, mental illness, gender, and so many other strong topics?