Jessica Friedmann
Things That Helped
Scribe Publications, 2017
Through the tide of hormones surging within my body, and the little runnels of blood, and the sour tang of my breasts, I lay awake, listening, and thinking of breath and of water. I had broken my relationship with sleep.
In this stunning collection, Jessica Friedmann navigates her journey through postpartum depression after the birth of her son. Drawing on critical theory, popular culture, and personal experience, her wide-ranging essays touch on class, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as motherhood, creativity, and mental illness.
Occasionally confronting, but always powerfully moving and beautifully observed, Things That Helped charts Jessica’s return into the world: a slow and complex process of reassembling what depression fractured, and sometimes broke.
2018 Longlisted - Australian Book Design Design Awards
Best Designed Autobiography/Biography/Memoir Non-Fiction Cover
“[A]n impressive debut … Friedmann views the world through a lens of intersectionality, and she has a sharp eye for how gender, race, and class shapes the family unit … Her language is deeply visceral, and therefore hugely affecting, when describing the feeling of pregnancy, motherhood, and mental illness … [Things That Helped] makes readers feel and think.”
About the Author
Jessica Friedmann is a writer and editor based in Braidwood NSW. Her essays and other non-fiction have appeared widely, both in Australia and internationally. Things That Helped was her first published collection.
