In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying Bassey Ikpi explores her life-as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black girl, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist-through the zoom lens of her mental health insurance and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her exceptional memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her personal truths and is situated for us all to behold with radical credibility and brutal intimacy.

A Bitch Newspaper Most Anticipated Publication of 2019 • A Bustle 21 New about I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Laying: Essays Memoirs THAT MAY Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You • A Web publishers Weekly Springtime Preview Selection • A POWER Lit 48 Books by Ladies and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019 • A Bookish Best non-fiction of Summer season Selection

‘We will not think or talk about mental wellness or normalcy the same after reading this momentous art object moonlighting like a colossal assortment of essays.” -Kiese Laymon, author of Weighty

From her early childhood in Nigeria through her adolescence in Oklahoma, Bassey Ikpi lived using a tumult of emotions, cycling between extreme euphoria and deep depression-sometimes within the course of a single day. By the time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken phrase artist and journeying with HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, channeling her existence into artwork. But under the façade from the self-confident performer, Bassey’s mental wellness was in a precipitous drop, culminating inside a breakdown that led to hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II.

In I’m Telling the reality, But I’m Lying, Bassey Ikpi breaks open our understanding of mental health giving us intimate access to her own. Discovering shame, confusion, medication, and family along the way, Bassey talks about how mental health impacts every aspect of our lives-how we appear to others, and moreover to ourselves-and issues our preconception in what it means to be ‘normal.’ Viscerally fresh and honest, the effect can be an exploration of the tales we show ourselves to create sense of who we are-and the methods, as honest as we try to be, each one of these stories may also be a lie.