📕 In her debut poetry collection, Sharp explores the limitations and heartache of being born with mental health conditions and what it means to accept a sadness that permeates every part of your being.| ✍️ ataviawrotethis👇
Death is a prominent theme—Sharp was dealing with suicidal ideations when she began writing the poems in 2013—but so is acceptance of self, freedom, and the exploration of a world where you can have both.
Storytelling is deeply rooted in Sharp’s heritage. Sharp’s grandmother, a retired nurse, was a born storyteller. Tales about life in Mississippi in the early 20th century and Chicago’s west side in the 1930s were frequent as Sharp grew up in Oak Park. The cliche is true for Sharp, too. In the fifth grade, she wrote a poetry book. At Oak Park and River Forest High School, she joined the spoken word club, led then by the celebrated poet Peter Kahn. As a junior, she took Saturday classes at Young Chicago Authors.Sharp’s later texts are more mature, exploring what it means to live with several mental health diagnoses as a Black woman.
“People have very romantic ideas of mental illness or mentally ill artists, but living with a mental illness isn’t romantic,” Sharp said. “It often gets in the way of creative output, which I think is important for people to recognize.”over the past ten years was lonely, scary, and freeing, Sharp said.
You can be sad, and you can be Black, and you can be lost, lonely, or frightened. But you can want to live, too. And there’s power in all of those qualities.“I started to realize that people are going to think I’m crazy anyways,” Sharp said. “People talk about me behind my back. I might as well just say, ‘Yeah, you’re correct. That is true.’ I’m not going to let these aimless notions about mental illness control my life and how I see myself.
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