Rachel Aviv in Conversation With Stephanie Danler

Strangers to Ourselves (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is the highly anticipated debut from acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv, compelling us to examine how the stories we tell about mental illness shape our sense of who we are. In her powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel — until it no longer does. Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind. Aviv will be joined in conversation by Stephanie Danler, author of Stray and Sweetbitter. This virtual launch event is presented in partnership with Skylight Books (Los Angeles), Green Apple Books (San Francisco), and Third Place Books (Seattle) and will be hosted by Skylight Books on Crowdcast.

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