How to Knit a Human: A memoir

by Anna Jacobson

I want to know what it was like to have crossed into the realm of madness. After all, I did it. I went mad. Why can’t I have the secret knowledge that comes with it?How do you write a memoir when your memories have been taken? She awakens in hospital, greeted by nurses and patients she doesn’t recognise, but who address her with familiarity. She decides to untangle the clues.How to Knit a Human is Anna’s quest to find her self and her memory after experiencing psychosis and Electroconvulsive therapy in 2011, at the age of twenty-three. As the memory barriers begin to crumble, Anna weaves her experiences around the gaps of memories that are still not accessible. Anna writes and creates art on her own terms. This book is a reclamation of story and self.‘How to Knit a Human is a precise and searching memoir that illuminates the fragile balance that can exist between memory and one’s sense of self. The writing reflects superbly on the profound impact of memory loss caused by psychosis and its treatment, and shows us how storytelling can form part of healing through the sharing of experiences and a deeper understanding of them.’ — Kári Gíslason‘In this wise, wry and moving memoir Anna Jacobson reclaims her self from the institutions that sought to define her. As she asks vital questions about care, memory and inheritance, Jacobson reminds us of the recuperative joy of creative life.’ — Mireille Juchau‘This book is a revelation. If Leonora Carrington teamed up with Janet Frame you might get something close to the kind, gentle, weird and brutal brilliance of How to Knit a Human. Anna Jacobson has shifted my perspective on art and illness. 100 stars. Bravo!’ — Kris Kneen‘How to Knit a Human is a visceral and immersive memoir – carefully crafted as well as genre-bending. Jacobson delves deep into her own unquiet mind only to emerge artistically victorious. A triumph.’ — Lee Kofman‘Blazing, incantatory and furious, this is a work of unshakeable witness. Jacobson sorts through the shapes and shades of memory, dropped stitches and invisible repairs, to forge a blazing work of consolation and recuperation, a paean to resilience and creativity.’ — Felicity Plunkett‘In How to Knit a Human, Anna Jacobson gives us a sheaf of home made X-rays that net interior light. Her ability to stand both inside and outside of memory as an encased form has allowed Anna a rare set of insights, something akin to planting seeds in the air, that initially subsist then quietly grow under the moisture in her own breath. As writer, artist and musician, it is fortunate that Anna has the intellectual, emotional, familial and spiritual machinery to approach memory (as itself and herself), in a way that she can watch the pieces of the existential jigsaw move inside the box without her even touching them.’ — Nathan Shepherdson

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2024

About the author

Anna Jacobson is an award-winning writer and artist from Brisbane. Her most recent collection, Anxious in a Sweet Store, was published by Upswell earlier this year. Amnesia Findings (UQP, 2019), her first full-length poetry collection, won the 2018 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Her memoir How to Knit a Human is forthcoming with NewSouth Publishing in 2024. She was the recipient of the 2020 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing. Her website is www.annajacobson.com.au

Reviews

[Caroline Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book although I'm not sure enjoyed is really the right word!

[Robert Manning · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never really engaged with the book. It might be my state of mind at the moment, quite a lot on. Her actual breakdown was well described and you could feel her moment of madness coming and the terror she felt. Clutching on to her brother's jumper at the hospital and him having to take it off because she would not let it go was powerful. And then following her recovery and emerging academic and artistic success was where I drifted off. These deeply personal memoirs are a kind of therapy in themselves and powerfully meaningful to Anna and no doubt others who have battled through mental illness.

[Anomilie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderful memoir working with and around the concept of a black hole in recollections. It captures how the Australian mental health system makes patients more unwell. I liked the changing of narrative voice from first to third person.

[B.P. Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Disclosure: this review was written for the Tasmanian Times]

Waking up from another round of electro-convulsive therapy (aka ‘shock therapy’) left Anna Jacobson, in her early 20’s, completely disassociated from her memory, her life and her ‘self’. Who was she? How did she get all the small wounds? Who was the madwoman she’d heard had repeatedly tried to violently escape the locked psychiatric institute she found herself in?

How Anna Jacobson reassembled her ‘self’ from clues, and the memories of others, via the support of her family, friends and colleagues, is the story of How To Knit A Human.

Following a horrific psychotic event, Jacobson spends the next few years gathering the tattered strands of half-remembered moments, accepts the kindnesses of others, deals with the grind of mental health support, rides the rollercoaster of anti-psychotic medications, then weaves the strands together, hoping to create a self she could recognise and care about.

Loose threads replace my body.

Frays appear unseen over time.

Threads unravel – gripped and pulled

by hundreds of invisible pincers.

Now I knit myself back into a human.

It’s hard work relearning the steps –

slip-stitch, drop-stitch, pick-up stitch, loop.

I get into a rhythm. The pattern is complex –

I drop a few stitches.

The holes form gaps in my memory.

If this all sounds too awful for a readable book, it’s actually not. Surprisingly, this is a warmly engaging story that doesn’t shy from the harsh realities, but weaves it all into a satisfying fabric. The intriguing paradox of how Jacobson could write a memoir when her memory has been erased is resolved by hard work on her part, and a great deal of luck. The family and friends who accept her struggle and support her journey, and those mental health professionals who manage, despite their training, to do the same, are, along with the meds, her life-savers. Without them all, it’s easy to imagine Jacobson sinking beyond anyone’s help.

Our mental health services are in perennial crisis, and while those in extreme needs get acute support, and those with affordably manageable issues can get moderate levels of support, those who fall between the very wide and deep cracks have only themselves and those around them to depend on for survival.

Jacobson writes and creates art to help herself heal, and with How To Knit A Human, she hopes to help others who struggle ‘feel less alone’ with their experiences. With this work, I think she’s achieved both.

[Svetlana Sterlin]

“My memories of my mad self remain as silent and pitch-black as a tear in the universe. A black hole I am constantly reknitting myself around. How does one knit around such a nebulous, constantly moving form?

…

I feel empowered. My braid is getting stronger, my selves woven so closely together, I am nearly whole.”

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very descriptive memoir of the author's mental health struggles and treatment. I'm in awe of how much she's accomplished while surviving the medications, side effects and trauma of a major psychotic episode. It's not very long and I connected with the writing and drawings so it was a quick read. I recommend it.

[Vanessa Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honest account of recovery from psychosis and memory loss due to ECT. This is an interesting topic I haven't seen in a mental health memoir before, and brings up issues to do with rights and autonomy in people experiencing psychosis. I also enjoyed the window the author opened into Jewish culture and the creative process.

[Rebecca Egan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an insightful look into the authors experience of psychosis, involuntary mental health treatment and how creative arts practices and psychiatric survivor communities played a role in healing. A short yet powerful read

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

She does not take memory and sanity for granted. She does not take anything foe granted.

Rich and moving.

[Brenda Rosser]

wonderful

[Gabriella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anna lets us into her world in this book, which gives an intimate look at the failings of Australias mental health system that prioritizes minimizing liability over well-being and flourishing.

[Bethany Parry · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a very personal story and took a lot of work and bravery to write, but I found it very difficult to relate to and be emerged in. The writing felt very young, and I felt I had to force myself to push through irrelevant tangents. I was confused by the shift 3/4 through that focussed unnecessarily on academic achievements.
I had expected something similar to Still Alice, which it definitely is not.