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Halfway heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder
Based on Thernstrom's article in "The New Yorker", here is the complete story of the murder-suicide that shocked Harvard.
Drawing on the diaries kept by the murderer, Thernstrom constructs the inner life of a troubled girl whose cultural differences fueled her isolation and desperation. A gripping work, "Halfway Heaven" raises profound questions about the nature of attachment, female friendship, and the power of loneliness to transform love into destruction.
Drawing on the diaries kept by the murderer, Thernstrom constructs the inner life of a troubled girl whose cultural differences fueled her isolation and desperation. A gripping work, "Halfway Heaven" raises profound questions about the nature of attachment, female friendship, and the power of loneliness to transform love into destruction.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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August 26, 2010
Why does evil exist? That is one question central to the mystery surrounding the stabbing death of Trang Phuang Ho by her Harvard roommate Sinedu Tasdesse, who then hanged herself. Both girls were entering their senior year, both had been high school valedictorians, both immigrants from countries that had been ravaged by war, both were pre-med, and both very intelligent. Everyone wanted to know why this tragedy occurred. What was Sinedu's motivation?
The author had known Sinedu briefly when she taught English at Harvard, and she was persuaded by The New Yorker to write a piece about the girls' tragedy. To discover the truth, Thernstrom traveled to Ethiopia, where she discovered a culture rooted in traditions very different from those Sinedu would encounter at Harvard. She was a quiet, unassuming, bright child, but unable to make close friends. She was obsessed with perfection. There were numerous signs that a II was not well, but th ey were overlooked. Merely the fact that she skipped a final exam should have been a clue, for she never missed any commitment.
Ethiopians faced an enormous cultural gulf coming to the United States. We have a cult of individualism from which we gain our identity. In Ethiopia, self-identity derives from one's place in the community. Campus African-American organizations could not help because they didn't share language or culture any more than residents of New York share culture with people from Mexico City even though all live on the same continent. Ethiopians did not view themselves as Africans but as Ethiopians. Racial identity was thrust on them in the United States. It was a foreign concept to be considered "black" They th ought of themselves as Amharic, Tigrayan or Oromo, not as a particular color. "The longer you're in the U.S., the more your sense of color consciousness tends to develop . . .. African Americans would talk about how we were brothers, but our cultures are totally opposite. . . . At first I felt pressure to hang around with black students and join the Black Students society, and then I realized I fit in there even less than I did with other students." So writes an Ethiopian student at Columbia University.
Social disparity became another cultural barrier. Most Harvard students come from very wealthy backgrounds. Those few who do not are appalled by the ostentatious display of wealth: students rewarded with cars and ski trips for good grades. One poor Hispanic student didn't know how to tie a tie because he had never owned one. He was asked not to attend one social event because he did not have a jacket and tie, increasing his sense of social isolation.
Harvard did little to decrease the isolation - the idea was assimilation, after all. "Harvard is very complacent, very arrogant - there is this attitude: we're the best university on earth and yo u should be happy here. For someone with a fragile sense of self - I can see how it could destroy you." Shugu Iman, daughter of a prominent Pakistani family.
Sinedu left a series of extraordinary diaries - all written in English, perhaps because many English words like "depression" have no Amharic equivalent. They record her desperate attempt to understand and fit into a vastly different culture and her losing battle to maintain her mental health. Many of the terms she used to describe her isolation are common to social outcasts. Sylvia Plath referred to herself as being in a bell jar "stewing in my own sour air" Despite Sinedu's conscious efforts to "put on a mask" and to fake social skills, she failed (in her mind) because people respond to gestures and facial expressions that are culturally ingrained. "The problem of isolation is one that - by definition - cannot be solved alone."
Spin control has become big business at Harvard. Their PR vice-president, James Rowe, was hired in 1994 at a salary of $200,000. The murder/suicide occurred at a time when Harvard was in the midst of a $2.1 billion endowment campaign that required them to raise $1 million per day. Stonewalling became the rule. Staff were ordered to refer all questions to the central PR office, where no answers were forthcoming. Even the Cambridge police department often failed to learn of a problem on campus until notified by the coroner's office. "The fact that the university has sent the word out not to talk to anyone is precisely the problem. The outrage is that they're more interested in preserving the reputation of the university when their real interest should be in getting people to talk about it as much as possible to figure out what went wrong," says Harvey Silvergate, a Harvard affiliate and Boston trial lawyer. "The administrators have taken over the university. Consequently various humane and educational values such as self-criticism and truth-telling - are subordinated to protecting the university's reputation"
Thernstrom has sought out the truth and it's not pleasant. Clearly, both deaths - and perhaps some of the other suicides she discusses - could have been prevented with a little attention from a university less arrogant and narcissistic.
The author had known Sinedu briefly when she taught English at Harvard, and she was persuaded by The New Yorker to write a piece about the girls' tragedy. To discover the truth, Thernstrom traveled to Ethiopia, where she discovered a culture rooted in traditions very different from those Sinedu would encounter at Harvard. She was a quiet, unassuming, bright child, but unable to make close friends. She was obsessed with perfection. There were numerous signs that a II was not well, but th ey were overlooked. Merely the fact that she skipped a final exam should have been a clue, for she never missed any commitment.
Ethiopians faced an enormous cultural gulf coming to the United States. We have a cult of individualism from which we gain our identity. In Ethiopia, self-identity derives from one's place in the community. Campus African-American organizations could not help because they didn't share language or culture any more than residents of New York share culture with people from Mexico City even though all live on the same continent. Ethiopians did not view themselves as Africans but as Ethiopians. Racial identity was thrust on them in the United States. It was a foreign concept to be considered "black" They th ought of themselves as Amharic, Tigrayan or Oromo, not as a particular color. "The longer you're in the U.S., the more your sense of color consciousness tends to develop . . .. African Americans would talk about how we were brothers, but our cultures are totally opposite. . . . At first I felt pressure to hang around with black students and join the Black Students society, and then I realized I fit in there even less than I did with other students." So writes an Ethiopian student at Columbia University.
Social disparity became another cultural barrier. Most Harvard students come from very wealthy backgrounds. Those few who do not are appalled by the ostentatious display of wealth: students rewarded with cars and ski trips for good grades. One poor Hispanic student didn't know how to tie a tie because he had never owned one. He was asked not to attend one social event because he did not have a jacket and tie, increasing his sense of social isolation.
Harvard did little to decrease the isolation - the idea was assimilation, after all. "Harvard is very complacent, very arrogant - there is this attitude: we're the best university on earth and yo u should be happy here. For someone with a fragile sense of self - I can see how it could destroy you." Shugu Iman, daughter of a prominent Pakistani family.
Sinedu left a series of extraordinary diaries - all written in English, perhaps because many English words like "depression" have no Amharic equivalent. They record her desperate attempt to understand and fit into a vastly different culture and her losing battle to maintain her mental health. Many of the terms she used to describe her isolation are common to social outcasts. Sylvia Plath referred to herself as being in a bell jar "stewing in my own sour air" Despite Sinedu's conscious efforts to "put on a mask" and to fake social skills, she failed (in her mind) because people respond to gestures and facial expressions that are culturally ingrained. "The problem of isolation is one that - by definition - cannot be solved alone."
Spin control has become big business at Harvard. Their PR vice-president, James Rowe, was hired in 1994 at a salary of $200,000. The murder/suicide occurred at a time when Harvard was in the midst of a $2.1 billion endowment campaign that required them to raise $1 million per day. Stonewalling became the rule. Staff were ordered to refer all questions to the central PR office, where no answers were forthcoming. Even the Cambridge police department often failed to learn of a problem on campus until notified by the coroner's office. "The fact that the university has sent the word out not to talk to anyone is precisely the problem. The outrage is that they're more interested in preserving the reputation of the university when their real interest should be in getting people to talk about it as much as possible to figure out what went wrong," says Harvey Silvergate, a Harvard affiliate and Boston trial lawyer. "The administrators have taken over the university. Consequently various humane and educational values such as self-criticism and truth-telling - are subordinated to protecting the university's reputation"
Thernstrom has sought out the truth and it's not pleasant. Clearly, both deaths - and perhaps some of the other suicides she discusses - could have been prevented with a little attention from a university less arrogant and narcissistic.
December 27, 2011
Melanie Thernstrom writes about the murder of a Vietnamese Harvard student by her Ethiopian roommate, who subsequently commits suicide. Ms. Thernstrom has access to the troubled student's diaries and friends. Yet she produces a book that is more a reflection on her own privelege, and how troubled her relationship with her alma mater, Harvard, becomes, as a result of engaging in investigative journalism. For every element of investigation, she documents her questions about the ethics of her behavior (do I fly to Ethiopia and drop in on the student's family unannounced?) then does it anyway. Did she mention she went to Harvard? and learned to write there? and thrived there? (they sent her to Ireland) and that her entire family went there? But oh, there are students who are unhappy there, students who haven't come up the ranks of privelege. That's kind of sad. Let's be sad for a little while because we're deep. Let's probe the cultural ramifications of this crime, then ignore them to veer off into diagnosing the killer with every personality disorder in the DSM. Ms. Thernstrom did have the taste to consult Paul McHugh, a Hopkins psychiatrist known for his common sense, whose comments on evil were well worth reading. Did Ms. Thernstrom mention she went to Harvard?
December 6, 2019
This book turned out to be different and more thoughtful than I had imagined. Instead of considering this a true crime book, it is much more a true psychology book that is underpinned by crime. Thernstrom writes for the New Yorker, and had attended Harvard, which enabled her to bring a unique perspective to the story of a murder - suicide on campus. By the end, the book’s focus is much more on how mental illness is ineffectively dealt with on college campuses (which serve as a microcosm of the outside world), and how difficult it is for all students, especially foreign students, to find and get the help they need. This is an exceptionally sad read because I don’t think anything has really changed for mentally ill students between the time the book was written and now. Despite our national Mental Health Parity Act, we lag far behind in treating diseases of the mind as we would treat diseases of the body.
August 4, 2017
This was a heartbreaking read about a Harvard premed student's steep decline into mental illness, the university's complete failure to notice or do anything meaningful to help, and the disastrous events that followed. The author, who has studied and taught at that school and even lived in the dorm where the murder-suicide occurred, was able to tell us a great deal about the people involved, and the role of Harvard itself in the events. This book is a powerful statement about the destructive power of isolation, the ways pain can destroy a person's life or make it more powerful, and the different ways people deal with the unbearable. This story will stay with me a very long time.
February 15, 2011
Overall, a good story about loneliness and mental illness and what happens when the latter goes untreated. Here we are, 15 years after the events of the book, and I don't think we're much better at supporting those who suffer from diseases of the brain.
A few things about this book bugged. First, I'm reading it because I'm interested in what happened to these two women, not because I care about the author's emotional journey in writing it, or how her "relationship with Harvard" is damaged along the way. Eye roll. Secondly, quotes from Vietnamese immigrants that are rendered grammatically correct in the original New Yorker piece (where the story first ran) become broken English in the book. It may be fine to do that in a personal essay or memoir (I don't know) but the book presents itself as a piece of reporting, and the journalism rule is you correct for imperfect English.
A few things about this book bugged. First, I'm reading it because I'm interested in what happened to these two women, not because I care about the author's emotional journey in writing it, or how her "relationship with Harvard" is damaged along the way. Eye roll. Secondly, quotes from Vietnamese immigrants that are rendered grammatically correct in the original New Yorker piece (where the story first ran) become broken English in the book. It may be fine to do that in a personal essay or memoir (I don't know) but the book presents itself as a piece of reporting, and the journalism rule is you correct for imperfect English.
May 21, 2011
My first experience with Melanie Thernstrom's writing was The Dead Girl, her debut, which was a moving tribute to her best friend's murder. When Halfway Heaven followed in 1997, I grabbed it immediately, assuming that with Thernstrom's insider knowledge of Harvard (she'd been both a student and an instructor there), her version of events would be riveting.
::: The Murder/Suicide :::
The murder/suicide of two of Harvard's foreign students was huge news back in 1995. Sinedue Tadesse, an Ethiopian national, stabbed her roommate Trang Ho, a Vietnamese immigrant, 45 times, then hung herself. Ho's friend, Thao Nguyen, was there at the time of the attack, and attempted to stop it, but was attacked herself, and locked out of the room as she ran for help.
The crime itself was shocking enough: both girls were good, if not outstanding students; both were pre-med students; and they had been roommates for two years. Students who knew both girls claimed to have seen no signs of the impending tragedy, and no one who knew them could see any reason for Sinedu's attack to have occurred. Police had enough evidence to be sure of what had happened (locked windows with untouched dust, a door blocked after Nguyen's exit, the suicide), but no motive. Compounding the lack of information was the reticence of Harvard administration to share the findings of their own internal investigation, gag orders placed on faculty and staff by the administration, and the reluctance of two families to talk to reporters. Ho's mother spoke no English, and Tadesse's family lived in Ethiopia.
Thernstrom, on assignment from The New Yorker interviewed everyone she possibly could, from members of the school's tutoring staff (which, best as I can determine, are a combination resident advisor and student advisor) to former students of Harvard, to Tadesse's family and others in Ethiopia. Halfway Heaven is a compendium of the information about the case itself, as well as on the state of mental health care available on college campuses.
::: The First Person :::
Where Halfway Heaven fails is in its similarities to The Dead Girl. Thernstrom wrote The Dead Girl as half-friend/half-reporter. The insertion of her own thoughts and feelings made perfect sense there, as it was her friend who was murdered. She participated in the search. She went to the funeral. When she does the same with Halfway Heaven, it becomes annoying.
What could have been a decent investigative report on the murder/suicide becomes a personal mission for Thernstrom. The tragedy of two very bright girls becomes a vehicle for Thernstrom to share her own feelings, from her reluctance to pester the family in Ethiopia, to reflections on her own friend's murder, to a brief encouter she had with Tadesse while teaching a course at Harvard that is given far too much significance in her mind.
The beginnings of the book show definite promise as Thernstrom attempts to look at the reasons why the murder/suicide happened, and what part, if any, the college's environment created the situation that led to it. However, from her first decision to stay in a student meeting with administration because she just "didn't think to leave" smacks of a smarmy "Harvard insider" mentality. Any good investigative journalist will obviously use any tool possible to get the story, but an incident like the one in which Thernstrom attempts to interview the head of the house the girls live in is just annoying and superfluous. When she asks the receptionist for a copy of the house phone book, she is denied, and takes a perverse pleasure in getting the same information out of another copy in a central location, while admitting she could have gotten the same information from the campus operator. Her "Hah! I showed them! I KNEW where else to find it because I LIVED HERE." did nothing but detract from my opinion of her as an impartial reporter. Every time Thernstrom was denied access or information by someone at Harvard, it became more and more like a child stomping her foot saying "I'll show them."
The first half of the book is a fascinating look into some of the dynamics that may have played into the tragedy, but the second half is more of a petulant whine at being denied additional access based on what she perceives to be her insider status that puts her in a different position than the rest of the press. Halfway Heaven had a great deal of potential at exposing not only possible motives for the murder/suicide and any responsibility the college may have had in its occurrence, but is reduced to more of an adolescent rant including interviews with students who feel the mental-health care system at Harvard failed them, but otherwise have nothing to do with the crime whatsoever.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Halfwa...
::: The Murder/Suicide :::
The murder/suicide of two of Harvard's foreign students was huge news back in 1995. Sinedue Tadesse, an Ethiopian national, stabbed her roommate Trang Ho, a Vietnamese immigrant, 45 times, then hung herself. Ho's friend, Thao Nguyen, was there at the time of the attack, and attempted to stop it, but was attacked herself, and locked out of the room as she ran for help.
The crime itself was shocking enough: both girls were good, if not outstanding students; both were pre-med students; and they had been roommates for two years. Students who knew both girls claimed to have seen no signs of the impending tragedy, and no one who knew them could see any reason for Sinedu's attack to have occurred. Police had enough evidence to be sure of what had happened (locked windows with untouched dust, a door blocked after Nguyen's exit, the suicide), but no motive. Compounding the lack of information was the reticence of Harvard administration to share the findings of their own internal investigation, gag orders placed on faculty and staff by the administration, and the reluctance of two families to talk to reporters. Ho's mother spoke no English, and Tadesse's family lived in Ethiopia.
Thernstrom, on assignment from The New Yorker interviewed everyone she possibly could, from members of the school's tutoring staff (which, best as I can determine, are a combination resident advisor and student advisor) to former students of Harvard, to Tadesse's family and others in Ethiopia. Halfway Heaven is a compendium of the information about the case itself, as well as on the state of mental health care available on college campuses.
::: The First Person :::
Where Halfway Heaven fails is in its similarities to The Dead Girl. Thernstrom wrote The Dead Girl as half-friend/half-reporter. The insertion of her own thoughts and feelings made perfect sense there, as it was her friend who was murdered. She participated in the search. She went to the funeral. When she does the same with Halfway Heaven, it becomes annoying.
What could have been a decent investigative report on the murder/suicide becomes a personal mission for Thernstrom. The tragedy of two very bright girls becomes a vehicle for Thernstrom to share her own feelings, from her reluctance to pester the family in Ethiopia, to reflections on her own friend's murder, to a brief encouter she had with Tadesse while teaching a course at Harvard that is given far too much significance in her mind.
The beginnings of the book show definite promise as Thernstrom attempts to look at the reasons why the murder/suicide happened, and what part, if any, the college's environment created the situation that led to it. However, from her first decision to stay in a student meeting with administration because she just "didn't think to leave" smacks of a smarmy "Harvard insider" mentality. Any good investigative journalist will obviously use any tool possible to get the story, but an incident like the one in which Thernstrom attempts to interview the head of the house the girls live in is just annoying and superfluous. When she asks the receptionist for a copy of the house phone book, she is denied, and takes a perverse pleasure in getting the same information out of another copy in a central location, while admitting she could have gotten the same information from the campus operator. Her "Hah! I showed them! I KNEW where else to find it because I LIVED HERE." did nothing but detract from my opinion of her as an impartial reporter. Every time Thernstrom was denied access or information by someone at Harvard, it became more and more like a child stomping her foot saying "I'll show them."
The first half of the book is a fascinating look into some of the dynamics that may have played into the tragedy, but the second half is more of a petulant whine at being denied additional access based on what she perceives to be her insider status that puts her in a different position than the rest of the press. Halfway Heaven had a great deal of potential at exposing not only possible motives for the murder/suicide and any responsibility the college may have had in its occurrence, but is reduced to more of an adolescent rant including interviews with students who feel the mental-health care system at Harvard failed them, but otherwise have nothing to do with the crime whatsoever.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Halfwa...
November 16, 2023
I think this book fulfilled the purpose of giving us insight into Sinedu and Trang’s relationship and most importantly why Sinedu felt compelled to commit this crime. However I found some of the language and analysis to be culturally insensitive, which maybe more of a reflection of the time when this book was written. I also found it a bit odd that the author wrote about her personal relationship to Harvard and the journey of writing this book. I think she was attempting to explain some of the difficulties with collecting evidence/reveal the nature of secrecy at these well-known institutions, but it just felt misplaced and distracted from the story.
Read
November 21, 2024Read this with Zoe over the course of 3 days in a shared library book- I would have the copy from 5 AM to 4 PM, and she would read it from 4 PM to 5 AM.
- not believing in the Church, because a God who is so punitive cannot exist, to be punitive is to be human
- obscuring praise “gold” in “waxen” brutish statements. Obscuring scornful condemnation in blunt praise
- refusing or being unable to define individual identity, allowing the connective fibers of relationship to be the whole of your substance. What happens when those fibers change or dissolved (interacted well with Art by Réza)
- revenging every slight at all costs, to the full extent of human revenge. Being afraid of your own punitive nature but compelled by it so strongly
- using loneliness to control, entrap, manipulate.
- the social world as a realm of magic, dominated by sorcerous charmers
-unfathomable loss being conflated with unfathomable motives, which we cannot allow ourselves to accept as an answer. Do not accept the mystery, destroy or change harvard
- harvard yard as a golden green treasure trove, an institution designed solely to hoard wealth, any scholarship and generosity is incidental
- not believing in the Church, because a God who is so punitive cannot exist, to be punitive is to be human
- obscuring praise “gold” in “waxen” brutish statements. Obscuring scornful condemnation in blunt praise
- refusing or being unable to define individual identity, allowing the connective fibers of relationship to be the whole of your substance. What happens when those fibers change or dissolved (interacted well with Art by Réza)
- revenging every slight at all costs, to the full extent of human revenge. Being afraid of your own punitive nature but compelled by it so strongly
- using loneliness to control, entrap, manipulate.
- the social world as a realm of magic, dominated by sorcerous charmers
-unfathomable loss being conflated with unfathomable motives, which we cannot allow ourselves to accept as an answer. Do not accept the mystery, destroy or change harvard
- harvard yard as a golden green treasure trove, an institution designed solely to hoard wealth, any scholarship and generosity is incidental
June 9, 2018
I read this book for a course in Critical Readings for Higher Education. At the surface level, it does not really seem overt in why we were asked to read this book; it's about a murder-suicide at Harvard in the 1990s and looked like it would focus on true crime and psychology. However, as the context was given and the foundation set, it became clear that the message of this book was one critical of Harvard and of mental health services in general on college campuses. Overall, it was a good read and I would definitely recommend if you are interested in psychology, true crime, and/or if you are a Higher Ed. professional.
November 23, 2020
Absolutely fascinating investigative reporting of this murder suicide at Harvard. It fully examines the "in house solidarity" of this institution and all of their secrets.
June 11, 2026
The central question the book asks is: could anything have been done to prevent the murder-suicide, or was it inevitable, like “the question of evil”? The author does a good job exploring all sides of the question, gathering perspectives from Ethiopians and Vietnamese, Christians and Buddhists, Harvard administrators, psychiatrists, classmates, acquaintances, friends and family of Trang and Sinedu. She argues effectively that Harvard had a sizeable responsibility in the situation and could have done more, especially in terms of offering mental health support.
One of the most compelling sections of the book, called “Looking for a Villain”, which is not included in the essay the book is based on, paints a picture of the environment Sinedu would have had to navigate at Harvard, and the resources sorely lacking there. It includes testimonies from several other Harvard students and their struggles with mental health at Harvard, in one case starkly juxtaposing the experience of one student with that of his twin brother who went to MIT. The author builds a picture of an image-conscious, self-aggrandizing Harvard. Those in power at Harvard care more about “spin control”, media management, and their own egos than actually helping students with their mental health. The author details the difficulties in getting any information from Harvard. She does a commendable job questioning if Harvard has the capacity to engage in self-criticism and improve to prevent future similar cases from happening. As one example, Karel Liem, the Master of Dunster House, where Sinedu and Trang lived, severely mismanaged the House, and the multiple suicides that took place in the House earlier that year did not prompt any self-reflection and change, but rather more denial of responsibility.
What’s particularly tragic is that Sinedu seemed to have a good grasp of her issues and even where they stemmed from, yet Harvard never met her halfway to help her. Her therapist only held a Doctor of Education, he didn’t meet with Sinedu as much as she wished, and there were no discussions of psychiatric intervention. Sinedu attempted to solve her problems as best as she could on her own. She tried to intellectualize her way out of her social anxiety and social deficits by writing notebooks and notebooks of rules, and tried to seek connection by writing long, personal letters to strangers. She had begged her high school friend Lilian to transfer to Harvard, and she joined an evangelical Bible study group even though she didn’t believe in the Church in Ethiopia. She visited her brother at Dartmouth, but he seemed impatient for her to leave and she ultimately could not open up to him.
The author traverses the narrative with the sufficient grace and nuance. Though some people may find her self-insertion grating at times, I think it’s fitting to have a Harvard grad with close ties with Harvard investigate the case, since ultimately the story is woven tightly with Harvard. We witness her perspective as someone who initially venerated Harvard, who grew up with a Harvard professor as a father, graduated from Harvard, and even lectured there, but over time witnesses the idealized version of Harvard fail to live up to itself. Of course, her continued centering of her own perspective is less effective and less welcome in the section where she visits Ethiopia and is out of her element, which is probably what other reviewers had issues with.
This is a story of America; of immigrants, like those who immigrated as a child like Trang and are able to carve out an identity and a place here, however briefly; those who immigrated as a young adult like Sinedu, who find it hard to adjust culturally, desperately flailing as old ways of coping fall apart and fail; of the high hopes placed on immigrant children by family members, who immigrate with them, or who stay behind; of the exploitative American institutions like Harvard who demand so much of their international students to prop up their reputation yet give the bare minimum back; of the born and raised Americans who grow up privileged in America but have their rose-tinted view of America and its institutions shattered in the wake of tragedy.
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“There is no psychological culture. Most people are so concerned with physical survival that there is no room for other things”
“Sinedu must have had no practice dealing with her emotions, and therefore she dealt with them in a primitive way.”
“Her family was strict and she was a superior student and that was the basis on which she received admiration. In Ethiopia family is like a blanket and then you come to the States and you’re forced to confront your identity for the first time and you come unsure of yourself.”
“Happiness is not an Ethiopian value…The essence of happiness has to do with freedom of choice and pursuing your own desires. Ethiopians are supposed to be responsible; that is the highest value.”
“Sinedu maintained her autonomy and didn’t become overly friendly to make other friends. I always felt she made her own decisions and, when you make American friends, you cannot stay wholly Ethiopian. You compromise your identity.”
“[Sinedu] went to great lengths to conceal her loneliness…it could have even fear that if she did open up her emotional side she’d be opening up a void she’d have no way of filling.”
“All her life, Sinedu had been unique. When you’re an exemplary student in Ethiopia, all achievements and awards are made public. You are never like other students. [She] had a yearning to finally find someone just like her—an exclusive friend, someone on whom your existence depends, who becomes the person you rely on the most—your primary attachment.”
“All Ethiopians have hardship in common…We don’t think of it as something to talk about.”
“While suicide is very rare in Ethiopia, suicide rates are high among Ethiopians who emigrate to other countries, such as the United States and Israel. Ethiopian lives are like threads woven in a tapestry of suffering…People always want to leave, but when you pluck the thread of their selfhood, it loses all meaning.”
“There is talk of shutting down the Mental Health Service altogether, as a cost-saving move, farming out all services to an AHMO, like pilgrim, which as one therapist says, ‘shows how low on the university’s priorities we are. The Orthopedics Department is costly too, but there’s no talk of shutting that down.’”
“Yet high achievement often leads to—or is a product of—isolation. Achievement can stem from insecurity—a need to prove oneself better than everyone else, or from depression—a need to make oneself feel better—as much as it can from talent or desire to contribute to the world.”
“Foreign students are often at risk for under treatment because mental disorders may be misinterpreted as assimilation problems, clinical depression as loneliness, and character pathology as traits of a foreign culture.”
“Depression is the most prominent response that the immigrant state of dislocation brings about.”
“A former admissions officer at Harvard tells me that the admissions committee makes an effort not to admit students with serious mental problems—a policy they feel reluctant to broadcast for fear of accusations of discrimination.”
“[Damien] is struck by the fact that he has not flourished academically at Harvard, whereas his brother is a star in his department at MIT, even though their mental abilities had alway been similar and his brother’s illness was much more severe.”
“What seems most damaging about the attitude Harvard adopted is that Chuck’s depression, with its suicidal manifestation, was treated not as an illness but as an infraction—one subject to disciplinary action.”
“Sinedu writes to Dr. Powell that if he is to remain her doctor she really needs to meet with him more frequently. She begins by telling him that it has been a ‘very very long tie since I last saw you. To you, I am only one of your subjects, but to me, you are my last hope and my last chance.’ She tries to hold on between appointments, she writes, but she can’t. In her letter to the stranger Sinedu writes that her therapist is very busy and can only see her once a other, or once a fortnight—not enough therapy to treat someone as ill as Sinedu, especially without medication.”
“Susan Besharov, a Washington, D.C., based clinical social worker who reviewed Sinedu’s diaries, says that ‘what makes Sinedu seem so ripe for treatment is that she does have a good deal of insight. She is able to make connections to her early childhood experience. She also takes an impressive responsibility for her problems, rather than just externalizing or blaming the world. What is so poignant for me as a therapist about Sinedu’s diaries is that she is both so acutely aware of her depression and is working terribly hard to compensate for her emotional deficits. This is what makes her therapy—with its infrequency and lack of medication—seem like such a missed opportunity.”
“Included in Sinedu’s journals are several pages labeled ‘Case History to tell Dr. Powell.’”
“Sinedu describes how her mother would ‘nag’ Sinedu and her siblings ‘to death,’ attacking them brutally for small mistakes, like spilling a cup of milk, and berating them with endless rules—a harsh critical voice perhaps very much like the one Sinedu addresses to herself in her Rule Book. But Sinedu is also very aware of her own similarity to the mother she describes hating so much: she sees herself as a workaholic, angry and depressed. In her letter to the stranger, Sinedu writes: ’If I live I do not want to live like my mother—lonely and sad.’ She describes her mother as never having had close friends, and as alienating her father’s friends and all their relatives.”
“Sinedu’s birth had coincided with the military coup of the Derg regime…Sinedu seems to have internalized some notion of responsibility for the family misfortune—an idea she knows logically is false and tries to talk herself out of in her journals, but which seems to have persistent psychological resonance.”
“Many of Sinedu’s perceptions do seem to reflect having come of age in a society in which the murderers have the power. Psychologists often talk about the developmental importance of outside influences to correct for the distortions of the family. But the world during the Derg regime only reinforced what seems to have been the particular pathologies of Sinedu’s family. Sinedu’s mother may have been communicating paranoia to her children, but during a time in which neighbors, friends, and servants were betraying one another to the secret police, there was reason to be paranoid.”
“…there is not convention in Ethiopia of discussing family problems with outsiders. As Bethelehem Gelaw, a classmate of Sinedu’s from ICS says, ‘I never knew Sinedu didn’t have a warm family. The things she says about her family are not shocking by American standards, where family connections are often broken, but they are very shocking by Ethiopian standards. In Ethiopia, family is everything.’”
“Sinedu wrote in a letter: ‘All this time I blamed lack of money as a cause to all my troubles. But somewhere deep inside me I knew money would not have been al the answer to my problems, although life would have been better with money. I saw the answer in my parents. As long as I knew her, my mother never had a friend or close relatives. She avoided social occasions and kept herself busy with housework. We never had warm family days because all conversation was tainted with the irritating argument between my parents. They had nothing to talk about so they picked on each other and on us. Political problems, civil wars, and the ever increasing price of goods took care of conversation at dinner time from day to day. I never felt proud of my family. As a matter of fact, I never admired or respected myself. What my parents did not do for me was, they did not give me love, they did not make me feel important in their lives, they did not guide me in social life. They always told me and my siblings how other kids are much better than we are. They did not make friends. They did not enjoy their lives. They nagged at us; they quarreled, abused us emotionally. There was no comfort to seek from them, no warmth. Life was cold and hopeless and annoying. Do not get me wrong, I do not blame them for all they did; they did not know ho else to be. They repeated their parents’ history. I don’t want to be a third generation of misfits.’
“Although she knew her siblings were also suffering, Sinedu writes that none of them helped one another. She describes how during puberty, her brother and sister began mercilessly mocking her appearance—calling her big-bottomed, big-headed, and huge. Her father’s friend used to call her ‘very black,’ and her mother use to tease her about being a ’no-nose,’—common Ethiopian insults…She felt, however, that her siblings’ teasing had a more malicious damaging spirit. Of course it was true that she wasn’t pretty, she writes, but she thinks that her family should have loved her in spite of her appearance.”
“It was during the time of her father’s imprisonment that Sinedu first sought refuge in what she describes as ‘the worst of all habits’: obsessive fantasizing. She began to spend hours daydreaming about herself as a happy, wealthy student living in a happy, wealthy family—fantasies so powerful she had trouble distinguishing them from reality. She recalls a delusional moment when she was ten or eleven, during which she actually wrote a good-bye note to her family so that she could go live with her fantasy family and then waited for God to transport her. Meanwhile she continued to slave at her schoolwork during the day in order to win he scholarship that would take her to America. Just as she had once conjured a perfect imaginary family for herself in Ethiopia, after the initial disappointment of Harvard, Sinedu began to fantasize about an ideal friend who would solve the same host of problems.”
“Unfortunately, relationships involving a great deal of so-called projection are rarely successful. One might imagine that a maternally deprived person such as Sinedu might project those longings to an adult relationship and actually succeeded in having those needs met. Instead, the projection usually works to transform the other person into into the imaginary longed-for parent but into a psychic replica of the true unsatisfactory parent, replaying the same process of disappointment, disillusionment, and rage. When Sinedu’s hopes in Trang were dashed, she was flooded with familiar depression and thirst for vengeance.”
“Revenge is often a dominant motif in suicide and murder/suicide…Sinedu writes of her resolution to get even with her mother one day for her ill-treatment.”
“Studies of homicide/suicides show that half to three quarters involve the desire for a more specific kind of revenge…’amorous jealousy’—also known as morbid jealously….The triggering event is often the female’s rejection of her lover and the threat of the loss or withdrawal of her affections.”
“Sinedu and Trang were not lovers, but the relationship in Sinedu’s mind clearly had elements of a romance. Sinedu’s feelings toward Trang seem to have resembled the intense crushlike attachments girls often have for each other—what the psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan calls the ‘chum,’ a relationship adults often replace with sexual partners. Sinedu killed Trang while she was in bed with another woman. Ordinarily, the presence of another person would be a deterrent from killing; in this case, it may have strengthened her resolve. For many hours in the early hours of the morning before the killing, Sinedu had lain in bed listening to the queen of her life talking and laughing girth someone else, the words—in Vitenamese and English—indistinct, but the tone of intimacy unmistakable, one Seined must have recognized with unbearable longing.”
“Like most mood-disordered patients contemplating violence, Sinedu displayed ambivalence and the desire for intervention — dyadic ‘either/or’ thinking. She made plans for her death, purchasing a knife and a rope, but she also made inquiries about her financial aid for the following year. She got excuses for her first two exams; it wasn’t until the final weekend that she was in a frame of mind in which failing a course no longer mattered. On the last day of her life she did a little packing. And when she did kill Trang, it was at the last possible minute: the morning Trang was going to move out of their room permanently, rather than after they had fallen asleep the night before, when it would have been less risky to carry out such a plan. (What if Trang and Thao had decided to get up in the morning when they heard Sinedu’s alarm instead of going back to sleep?)”
“‘If you push psychiatrists far enough,’ Dr. Longhurst says, ‘you’ll find most of them believe in evil.’”
“In Buddhist philosophy, sometimes people die to pay for their sins, but sometimes they die because they have nothing to pay for anymore and are just ready to move on.”
“For the people around her, Trang’s death is one in a series of losses. It is part of the double meaning America has always had for them: the country that promised to end the war, but instead entangled them in years of violence, the safe haven they never quite reach.”
“The hardest thing, Quy tells me in Vietnamese, is that the family had survived and rebuilt their fortunes after the war, and they decided to come to the States not because they were poor, but because they had three daughters and they wanted them to have opportunities for education and careers that do not exist in their country.”
“I know that the quality that enables Thao to believe that Trang loves her — the belief that she is loved and loving — is something that Sinedu had never had, though she sought it all her lief; and it seems therefore a kind of final truth: Sinedu actually could not help herself.”
One of the most compelling sections of the book, called “Looking for a Villain”, which is not included in the essay the book is based on, paints a picture of the environment Sinedu would have had to navigate at Harvard, and the resources sorely lacking there. It includes testimonies from several other Harvard students and their struggles with mental health at Harvard, in one case starkly juxtaposing the experience of one student with that of his twin brother who went to MIT. The author builds a picture of an image-conscious, self-aggrandizing Harvard. Those in power at Harvard care more about “spin control”, media management, and their own egos than actually helping students with their mental health. The author details the difficulties in getting any information from Harvard. She does a commendable job questioning if Harvard has the capacity to engage in self-criticism and improve to prevent future similar cases from happening. As one example, Karel Liem, the Master of Dunster House, where Sinedu and Trang lived, severely mismanaged the House, and the multiple suicides that took place in the House earlier that year did not prompt any self-reflection and change, but rather more denial of responsibility.
What’s particularly tragic is that Sinedu seemed to have a good grasp of her issues and even where they stemmed from, yet Harvard never met her halfway to help her. Her therapist only held a Doctor of Education, he didn’t meet with Sinedu as much as she wished, and there were no discussions of psychiatric intervention. Sinedu attempted to solve her problems as best as she could on her own. She tried to intellectualize her way out of her social anxiety and social deficits by writing notebooks and notebooks of rules, and tried to seek connection by writing long, personal letters to strangers. She had begged her high school friend Lilian to transfer to Harvard, and she joined an evangelical Bible study group even though she didn’t believe in the Church in Ethiopia. She visited her brother at Dartmouth, but he seemed impatient for her to leave and she ultimately could not open up to him.
The author traverses the narrative with the sufficient grace and nuance. Though some people may find her self-insertion grating at times, I think it’s fitting to have a Harvard grad with close ties with Harvard investigate the case, since ultimately the story is woven tightly with Harvard. We witness her perspective as someone who initially venerated Harvard, who grew up with a Harvard professor as a father, graduated from Harvard, and even lectured there, but over time witnesses the idealized version of Harvard fail to live up to itself. Of course, her continued centering of her own perspective is less effective and less welcome in the section where she visits Ethiopia and is out of her element, which is probably what other reviewers had issues with.
This is a story of America; of immigrants, like those who immigrated as a child like Trang and are able to carve out an identity and a place here, however briefly; those who immigrated as a young adult like Sinedu, who find it hard to adjust culturally, desperately flailing as old ways of coping fall apart and fail; of the high hopes placed on immigrant children by family members, who immigrate with them, or who stay behind; of the exploitative American institutions like Harvard who demand so much of their international students to prop up their reputation yet give the bare minimum back; of the born and raised Americans who grow up privileged in America but have their rose-tinted view of America and its institutions shattered in the wake of tragedy.
----------------------------------------
“There is no psychological culture. Most people are so concerned with physical survival that there is no room for other things”
“Sinedu must have had no practice dealing with her emotions, and therefore she dealt with them in a primitive way.”
“Her family was strict and she was a superior student and that was the basis on which she received admiration. In Ethiopia family is like a blanket and then you come to the States and you’re forced to confront your identity for the first time and you come unsure of yourself.”
“Happiness is not an Ethiopian value…The essence of happiness has to do with freedom of choice and pursuing your own desires. Ethiopians are supposed to be responsible; that is the highest value.”
“Sinedu maintained her autonomy and didn’t become overly friendly to make other friends. I always felt she made her own decisions and, when you make American friends, you cannot stay wholly Ethiopian. You compromise your identity.”
“[Sinedu] went to great lengths to conceal her loneliness…it could have even fear that if she did open up her emotional side she’d be opening up a void she’d have no way of filling.”
“All her life, Sinedu had been unique. When you’re an exemplary student in Ethiopia, all achievements and awards are made public. You are never like other students. [She] had a yearning to finally find someone just like her—an exclusive friend, someone on whom your existence depends, who becomes the person you rely on the most—your primary attachment.”
“All Ethiopians have hardship in common…We don’t think of it as something to talk about.”
“While suicide is very rare in Ethiopia, suicide rates are high among Ethiopians who emigrate to other countries, such as the United States and Israel. Ethiopian lives are like threads woven in a tapestry of suffering…People always want to leave, but when you pluck the thread of their selfhood, it loses all meaning.”
“There is talk of shutting down the Mental Health Service altogether, as a cost-saving move, farming out all services to an AHMO, like pilgrim, which as one therapist says, ‘shows how low on the university’s priorities we are. The Orthopedics Department is costly too, but there’s no talk of shutting that down.’”
“Yet high achievement often leads to—or is a product of—isolation. Achievement can stem from insecurity—a need to prove oneself better than everyone else, or from depression—a need to make oneself feel better—as much as it can from talent or desire to contribute to the world.”
“Foreign students are often at risk for under treatment because mental disorders may be misinterpreted as assimilation problems, clinical depression as loneliness, and character pathology as traits of a foreign culture.”
“Depression is the most prominent response that the immigrant state of dislocation brings about.”
“A former admissions officer at Harvard tells me that the admissions committee makes an effort not to admit students with serious mental problems—a policy they feel reluctant to broadcast for fear of accusations of discrimination.”
“[Damien] is struck by the fact that he has not flourished academically at Harvard, whereas his brother is a star in his department at MIT, even though their mental abilities had alway been similar and his brother’s illness was much more severe.”
“What seems most damaging about the attitude Harvard adopted is that Chuck’s depression, with its suicidal manifestation, was treated not as an illness but as an infraction—one subject to disciplinary action.”
“Sinedu writes to Dr. Powell that if he is to remain her doctor she really needs to meet with him more frequently. She begins by telling him that it has been a ‘very very long tie since I last saw you. To you, I am only one of your subjects, but to me, you are my last hope and my last chance.’ She tries to hold on between appointments, she writes, but she can’t. In her letter to the stranger Sinedu writes that her therapist is very busy and can only see her once a other, or once a fortnight—not enough therapy to treat someone as ill as Sinedu, especially without medication.”
“Susan Besharov, a Washington, D.C., based clinical social worker who reviewed Sinedu’s diaries, says that ‘what makes Sinedu seem so ripe for treatment is that she does have a good deal of insight. She is able to make connections to her early childhood experience. She also takes an impressive responsibility for her problems, rather than just externalizing or blaming the world. What is so poignant for me as a therapist about Sinedu’s diaries is that she is both so acutely aware of her depression and is working terribly hard to compensate for her emotional deficits. This is what makes her therapy—with its infrequency and lack of medication—seem like such a missed opportunity.”
“Included in Sinedu’s journals are several pages labeled ‘Case History to tell Dr. Powell.’”
“Sinedu describes how her mother would ‘nag’ Sinedu and her siblings ‘to death,’ attacking them brutally for small mistakes, like spilling a cup of milk, and berating them with endless rules—a harsh critical voice perhaps very much like the one Sinedu addresses to herself in her Rule Book. But Sinedu is also very aware of her own similarity to the mother she describes hating so much: she sees herself as a workaholic, angry and depressed. In her letter to the stranger, Sinedu writes: ’If I live I do not want to live like my mother—lonely and sad.’ She describes her mother as never having had close friends, and as alienating her father’s friends and all their relatives.”
“Sinedu’s birth had coincided with the military coup of the Derg regime…Sinedu seems to have internalized some notion of responsibility for the family misfortune—an idea she knows logically is false and tries to talk herself out of in her journals, but which seems to have persistent psychological resonance.”
“Many of Sinedu’s perceptions do seem to reflect having come of age in a society in which the murderers have the power. Psychologists often talk about the developmental importance of outside influences to correct for the distortions of the family. But the world during the Derg regime only reinforced what seems to have been the particular pathologies of Sinedu’s family. Sinedu’s mother may have been communicating paranoia to her children, but during a time in which neighbors, friends, and servants were betraying one another to the secret police, there was reason to be paranoid.”
“…there is not convention in Ethiopia of discussing family problems with outsiders. As Bethelehem Gelaw, a classmate of Sinedu’s from ICS says, ‘I never knew Sinedu didn’t have a warm family. The things she says about her family are not shocking by American standards, where family connections are often broken, but they are very shocking by Ethiopian standards. In Ethiopia, family is everything.’”
“Sinedu wrote in a letter: ‘All this time I blamed lack of money as a cause to all my troubles. But somewhere deep inside me I knew money would not have been al the answer to my problems, although life would have been better with money. I saw the answer in my parents. As long as I knew her, my mother never had a friend or close relatives. She avoided social occasions and kept herself busy with housework. We never had warm family days because all conversation was tainted with the irritating argument between my parents. They had nothing to talk about so they picked on each other and on us. Political problems, civil wars, and the ever increasing price of goods took care of conversation at dinner time from day to day. I never felt proud of my family. As a matter of fact, I never admired or respected myself. What my parents did not do for me was, they did not give me love, they did not make me feel important in their lives, they did not guide me in social life. They always told me and my siblings how other kids are much better than we are. They did not make friends. They did not enjoy their lives. They nagged at us; they quarreled, abused us emotionally. There was no comfort to seek from them, no warmth. Life was cold and hopeless and annoying. Do not get me wrong, I do not blame them for all they did; they did not know ho else to be. They repeated their parents’ history. I don’t want to be a third generation of misfits.’
“Although she knew her siblings were also suffering, Sinedu writes that none of them helped one another. She describes how during puberty, her brother and sister began mercilessly mocking her appearance—calling her big-bottomed, big-headed, and huge. Her father’s friend used to call her ‘very black,’ and her mother use to tease her about being a ’no-nose,’—common Ethiopian insults…She felt, however, that her siblings’ teasing had a more malicious damaging spirit. Of course it was true that she wasn’t pretty, she writes, but she thinks that her family should have loved her in spite of her appearance.”
“It was during the time of her father’s imprisonment that Sinedu first sought refuge in what she describes as ‘the worst of all habits’: obsessive fantasizing. She began to spend hours daydreaming about herself as a happy, wealthy student living in a happy, wealthy family—fantasies so powerful she had trouble distinguishing them from reality. She recalls a delusional moment when she was ten or eleven, during which she actually wrote a good-bye note to her family so that she could go live with her fantasy family and then waited for God to transport her. Meanwhile she continued to slave at her schoolwork during the day in order to win he scholarship that would take her to America. Just as she had once conjured a perfect imaginary family for herself in Ethiopia, after the initial disappointment of Harvard, Sinedu began to fantasize about an ideal friend who would solve the same host of problems.”
“Unfortunately, relationships involving a great deal of so-called projection are rarely successful. One might imagine that a maternally deprived person such as Sinedu might project those longings to an adult relationship and actually succeeded in having those needs met. Instead, the projection usually works to transform the other person into into the imaginary longed-for parent but into a psychic replica of the true unsatisfactory parent, replaying the same process of disappointment, disillusionment, and rage. When Sinedu’s hopes in Trang were dashed, she was flooded with familiar depression and thirst for vengeance.”
“Revenge is often a dominant motif in suicide and murder/suicide…Sinedu writes of her resolution to get even with her mother one day for her ill-treatment.”
“Studies of homicide/suicides show that half to three quarters involve the desire for a more specific kind of revenge…’amorous jealousy’—also known as morbid jealously….The triggering event is often the female’s rejection of her lover and the threat of the loss or withdrawal of her affections.”
“Sinedu and Trang were not lovers, but the relationship in Sinedu’s mind clearly had elements of a romance. Sinedu’s feelings toward Trang seem to have resembled the intense crushlike attachments girls often have for each other—what the psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan calls the ‘chum,’ a relationship adults often replace with sexual partners. Sinedu killed Trang while she was in bed with another woman. Ordinarily, the presence of another person would be a deterrent from killing; in this case, it may have strengthened her resolve. For many hours in the early hours of the morning before the killing, Sinedu had lain in bed listening to the queen of her life talking and laughing girth someone else, the words—in Vitenamese and English—indistinct, but the tone of intimacy unmistakable, one Seined must have recognized with unbearable longing.”
“Like most mood-disordered patients contemplating violence, Sinedu displayed ambivalence and the desire for intervention — dyadic ‘either/or’ thinking. She made plans for her death, purchasing a knife and a rope, but she also made inquiries about her financial aid for the following year. She got excuses for her first two exams; it wasn’t until the final weekend that she was in a frame of mind in which failing a course no longer mattered. On the last day of her life she did a little packing. And when she did kill Trang, it was at the last possible minute: the morning Trang was going to move out of their room permanently, rather than after they had fallen asleep the night before, when it would have been less risky to carry out such a plan. (What if Trang and Thao had decided to get up in the morning when they heard Sinedu’s alarm instead of going back to sleep?)”
“‘If you push psychiatrists far enough,’ Dr. Longhurst says, ‘you’ll find most of them believe in evil.’”
“In Buddhist philosophy, sometimes people die to pay for their sins, but sometimes they die because they have nothing to pay for anymore and are just ready to move on.”
“For the people around her, Trang’s death is one in a series of losses. It is part of the double meaning America has always had for them: the country that promised to end the war, but instead entangled them in years of violence, the safe haven they never quite reach.”
“The hardest thing, Quy tells me in Vietnamese, is that the family had survived and rebuilt their fortunes after the war, and they decided to come to the States not because they were poor, but because they had three daughters and they wanted them to have opportunities for education and careers that do not exist in their country.”
“I know that the quality that enables Thao to believe that Trang loves her — the belief that she is loved and loving — is something that Sinedu had never had, though she sought it all her lief; and it seems therefore a kind of final truth: Sinedu actually could not help herself.”
April 21, 2013
The book by Melanie Thernstrom details the 1994 murder-suicide between two Harvard students Sinedu and Trang: one of Ethiopian descent and the other from Vietnam. They were high achieving students seeking to make their families proud and to achieve the American dream of success and well-being. Sinedu was an awkward girl who found great difficulty making friends and adapting to the Harvard culture while Trang was an easy going student who easily made friends and excelled in all she did. Sinedu displayed signs of disturbance which was not picked up by the administration or her own brother who attended a nearby university. Sinedu was so lonely that she took up writing to strangers she had randomly selected from the phone book detailing her depression and frustrations. When Trang came into her life as a roommate, she projected all of her hopes for a friendship onto Trang only to be bitterly disappointed at Trang's rejection due to Sinedu's neediness. Sinedu's frustration at her bitter loneliness and her perceived rejection by Trang led her to murder Trang and then to commit suicide. The author does somewhat of a good job providing the biographical and sociological backgrounds of the students which does help shed light on the crime. However, the bulk of the book is a scathing indictment of the Harvard culture which, according to the author, a Harvard alumnus herself, failed to cater and timely notice the mental deterioration of Sinedu. Most of the book is a criticism of the lack of mental facilities and professional counselors in Harvard and how Harvard failed the students in this regard. My opinion is that colleges do not serve as surrogate parents and it is not their responsibility to hand hold and concentrate on mental health issues. However, my main complaint is that the bulk of the book was simply an indictment of Harvard's failure to provide mental services for their students. I would have liked to have seen more of a biographical and sociological examination of these two girls. I don't recommend the book at all unless the reader has an innate interest in the workings of Harvard culture.
February 20, 2020
Ethiopian student Sinedu Tadesse brutally murdered her Harvard college room mate Vietnamese Trang Ho. Why? Because that was her "good solution" as opposed to her "bad solution" for dealing with her loneliness at the same time as getting revenge for her perceived mis-treatment by her peers, especially Trang. This is a story of mental illness including extreme paranoia and social retardation and also evil. It is a tragic story about two brilliant students who's paths crossed to the devastation of many. I really enjoyed reading this book, Melanie Thernstrom is obviously a talented writer as well as a diligent reporter. I found it very informative regarding Ethiopian culture and was able to make a emotional connection with both victim and perpetrator. Was a little bit of an anti climax when it came to the chapter where she describes the actual murder, could've been written with more suspense and I felt that bit was kind of rushed. Miss Thernstrom also said she had gained access to Sinedu's diaries before writing the book but there were very few excerpts, really wanted more of the diary entries which really should chronicle Sinedu's mental health deteriorating. Overall this is a fascinating book to read, well written and spooky. More of the meditation of evil that is promised in the synopsis would have been good but still I will continue to recommend this book which should be a true crime classic!
August 6, 2016
I admit, I had very little faith in this book after the first part (and I'm still annoyed with the argument of "evil"), but overall it could have been worse. The book starts with Thernstrom un-ironically talking about her privilege--and at length--which is extremely irritating. Once she delves into the investigative part of this book, though Thernstrom is able to present evidence in an interesting and (mostly) respectable way. I really appreciate that she doesn't lay blame on Sinedu, the woman who murdered her roommate before killing herself, but rather presented us with some depiction of her Ethiopian background and culture, as well as her own journals which indicate a mental illness and/or personality disorder. She didn't once try and point: "There! That's the reason she's a killer! I've figured it out!" but I'm afraid that some more casual readers might. I'm grateful that she didn't try and oversimplify mental illness, but also brought into question the responsibility of an institution to its students. The best parts for me were the times she used past students' stories about their own struggles with illness and how schools handled them, I just wish she would have gone a little further.
May 7, 2024
On exploring book genres I have never tried before— true crime was an option. This book was about a Vietnamese Harvard student murdered by her Ethiopian roommate who then committed suicide.
Through an objective lens, the investigative journalism was careful and clever, at least on the first part. Thernstrom examined the cultural and psychological aspects in search of the answer to her main thesis: Where does the evil lie? She knew the right questions to throw to the right people at the right time, even if they were in expense of putting her ‘beloved’ alma mater under a bad light. (But that part where she described how Harvard meant to her felt unnecessary and privileged-sounding.) As I sank further into the story, it revealed less about the main plot and more about how Harvard denied its students the access to proper mental health services. It seemed as if it was a good material on the university’s crooked system and the murder/suicide was just a subsequent effect, among many others. Did she find the answer to her thesis question? It was undefined. But maybe it was for the readers to judge. 2.5/5
Through an objective lens, the investigative journalism was careful and clever, at least on the first part. Thernstrom examined the cultural and psychological aspects in search of the answer to her main thesis: Where does the evil lie? She knew the right questions to throw to the right people at the right time, even if they were in expense of putting her ‘beloved’ alma mater under a bad light. (But that part where she described how Harvard meant to her felt unnecessary and privileged-sounding.) As I sank further into the story, it revealed less about the main plot and more about how Harvard denied its students the access to proper mental health services. It seemed as if it was a good material on the university’s crooked system and the murder/suicide was just a subsequent effect, among many others. Did she find the answer to her thesis question? It was undefined. But maybe it was for the readers to judge. 2.5/5
August 27, 2011
My neighbor sent this book over, knowing that I read true crime. Seems like I remember the incident happening just yesterday but I see it occurred in 1995. A very sad story, starting with the two girls' childhood experiences growing up in Ethiopia and Vietnam. The author provided insight into their family customs, some much different than the ones they would encounter in Boston at Harvard, making the adjustment to college life more difficult. The shocking murder and suicide in their college dorm brings up questions of how much responsibility does Harvard own, looking back at the circumstances leading up to the tragedy. The description of the killer's diaries and the author's explanation of the different types of psychiatric diagnoses makes you realize just how important it is to receive a professional evaluation, therapy, and medication. Comparisons are made between how Harvard and other universities, such as MIT, handle their students' needs and cries for help. It's a difficult situation.
May 27, 2023
Sinedu was an immigrant from Ethiopia whose family had survived civil strife in their home country and her roommate at Harvard, Trang , had also overcome similar horrendous circumstances in Vietnam.
Culture shock was immediate to both as they attempted to blend in with the overwhelmingly American student body. Trang was able to assimilate more easily than her fellow premed classmate.
The pair were compatible at first but in their second year Sinedu fell deeper and deeper into depression. Her diaries showed a complex young lady with severe emotional issues.
An inner anger turned outward as Sinedu lost it when Trang decided to move out of their dorm room. After stabbing Trang forty five times, Sinedu hanged herself from a curtain rod.
The university has an internal security force and the local police and author found the school uncooperative and indifferent. Thernstrom was a graduate of the university but was frustrated by the constant roadblocks.
Halfway Heaven is well written but, in the end, a frustrating read with too many unanswered questions.
Culture shock was immediate to both as they attempted to blend in with the overwhelmingly American student body. Trang was able to assimilate more easily than her fellow premed classmate.
The pair were compatible at first but in their second year Sinedu fell deeper and deeper into depression. Her diaries showed a complex young lady with severe emotional issues.
An inner anger turned outward as Sinedu lost it when Trang decided to move out of their dorm room. After stabbing Trang forty five times, Sinedu hanged herself from a curtain rod.
The university has an internal security force and the local police and author found the school uncooperative and indifferent. Thernstrom was a graduate of the university but was frustrated by the constant roadblocks.
Halfway Heaven is well written but, in the end, a frustrating read with too many unanswered questions.
March 24, 2024
Well-researched, well-written investegative journalism. Tragic story, infuriating incompetence and then malfeasance by Harvard College. Particularly interesting for a Harvard College alum to read - it’s horrifying, but not surprising. Even for folks like the author (or myself) who enjoyed and are grateful for their time at the school. Illuminating portrayal of immigrant challenges, and mental health challenges in our society.
Some of the reviews here criticize the author for going to Harvard and having a “good time there”. Firstly, the author is open about that in the book. Secondly, I don’t know why that affects one’s reading of it. The author hardly defends Harvard, and really puts herself out there in her criticism and in obtaining the facts she does. Frankly, I think it’s her privilege that gave her the ability / confident to write this expose against the behemoth, and it’s a good thing she did.
Some of the reviews here criticize the author for going to Harvard and having a “good time there”. Firstly, the author is open about that in the book. Secondly, I don’t know why that affects one’s reading of it. The author hardly defends Harvard, and really puts herself out there in her criticism and in obtaining the facts she does. Frankly, I think it’s her privilege that gave her the ability / confident to write this expose against the behemoth, and it’s a good thing she did.
November 17, 2013
I almost didn't read this, thinking, due to the subtitle, it might involve a sensationalistic treatment. It's far from that, though: it includes cultural and psychological insights, careful critiques of mental health care policies and procedures, as well as a healthy examination of power structures in elite, ivy league universities. I especially enjoyed the insights into Amharic culture and language and the statistical analyses regarding mental health issues in college students. The author comes off as genuine, persistent, and dedicated to exploring and teasing apart complex truths, even if it means standing up to powerful institutions she has personal connections with. These are the qualities that so many contemporary American journalists lack, making this book even more appreciable.
June 19, 2015
It was a terrible thing to happen to both families. We didn't have to be walked through evidence or a trial like in other true crimes because there wasn't much to be gathered and there was no trial. Actual material seemed to be thin, most was about her ins and outs with the campus herself. And she makes no qualms about trumpeting her time spent there as a student even as she is berating their attitude. It is a deplorable situation, that they care more about their reputation than actually helping students, but that isn't a shock. It reminds me of those venerable families that lock away their troubled members rather than admit they need help. If you don't mind reading about a lot of personal waffling about intrusion by the author, then by all means. Otherwise, I'd pass it by.
September 15, 2016
A fascinating look at an inexplicable and grisly crime and the college roommates who were victim and perpetrator. The author introduces us to these two foreign students, showing us the girls' unique backgrounds and immersing us in the singular culture of Harvard. I enjoyed how the author was both objective journalist and curious participant in the investigation. This book is better than a memoir or a true crime book.
July 5, 2007
Working in higher education, this book provided a startling view into how the bureaucracy of a university can fail its students. This haunting true story of the relationship between roommates, the transition to a new culture, and the darkest places of the human mind stays long after the book has ended.
June 19, 2012
An interesting study of mental illness and the sick culture of Harvard. Instead of investing in the help students need with their depression, etc., the university hires lawyers to cover up and spin any occurrence that might lead to bad PR.The author reveals the murders and suicides that have taken place and the lack of care that surrounds them.
August 19, 2009
Had to read for a class, but could not put it down. Learned more about psychology from this book than from any other. Astonishing.
August 22, 2015
Pretty interesting true-crime story. More depressing than I thought it would be. Thernstrom has a beautiful writing style that flows well.
May 6, 2016
Interesting study of a murder case, but another author enamored with the words "that" and "had." It makes the writing bulky.
March 19, 2021
Starting when we already know the "whodunnit" of a savage knifing of a college student, Thernstrom tries to tell us the "why" of it. Do the answers lie in events in Africa or Vietnam, in Harvard's attempt to keep its perfect image, in clitoridectomy, or in repressed sexual urges? Thernstrom finds some explanations traveling to Ethiopia, talking with foreign students, reading the Ethiopian murderer's diary, etc., but at the end she has to throw up her hands and talk about "evil." An engrossing, quick reading account in which the author tries to use her background as a Harvard alumna and teacher to understand why her beloved alma mater let murderer and victim down, and what could be done in the future. I have requested her first book about the murder of her best friend, to try to find out in turn what she does when events are not so cut-and-dried, events which obviously led her to the true crime genre.
November 1, 2022
Melanie Thernstrom writes true crime in a far different way: she writes with both an investigative mindset for facts and stats, while also delving into the psychological / social pressures on both the victim and the perpetrator.
Halfway Heaven chronicles the childhood and college years of two Harvard students: one from Ethiopia and one an immigrant from Vietnam. The two become roommates. They have achieved their personal dream of attending Harvard while also establishing their place in their families' history as a "success story."
It's not that easy. While both are intellectually capable of success in academics, only one of the two has the social skills college demands.
The tragedy of the murder-suicide is amplified by Harvard's "no press" policies and the obfuscation of officials at Harvard, who would prefer the story to simply go away. Harvard may be the pinnacle of academia, but in 1996 at least, this institution came in woefully short on people skills.
Halfway Heaven chronicles the childhood and college years of two Harvard students: one from Ethiopia and one an immigrant from Vietnam. The two become roommates. They have achieved their personal dream of attending Harvard while also establishing their place in their families' history as a "success story."
It's not that easy. While both are intellectually capable of success in academics, only one of the two has the social skills college demands.
The tragedy of the murder-suicide is amplified by Harvard's "no press" policies and the obfuscation of officials at Harvard, who would prefer the story to simply go away. Harvard may be the pinnacle of academia, but in 1996 at least, this institution came in woefully short on people skills.
April 25, 2026
I thought the author’s insights on how mental health issues are (mis)handled in prestigious universities like Harvard, quite interesting and frankly, frustrating to learn. It’s sad to hear how cases can fall through the cracks when in fact, a young person like Sinedu could have been given help and supported through her challenges. No institution is perfect but in order to move forward, you need leadership that will prioritise accountability over PR and damage control.
July 4, 2020
If you are looking for a true crime gritty bloody details...this is not the book you are looking for. Far more insightful with regards to the mental instability and suffering of those we assume to have charmed lives simply because they have made it to a school such as Harvard.
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