This is an Online Internet Book Club on The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks. Discuss this book, share your thoughts, make comments, ask questions, offer responses...
Description
Elyn Saks is a success by any measure: she’s an endowed professor at the prestigious University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She has managed to achieve this in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis -- and suffering the effects of her illness throughout her life.
Saks was only eight, and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in sunny 1960s Miami, when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it was not until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital.
Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night, during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent the next five months in a psychiatric ward.
So began Saks’s long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. She is married to a wonderful man.
In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks discusses frankly and movingly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today. It is destined to become a classic in the genre.
Book Club Questions for The Center Cannot Hold (Fiction)
Suggested Book Club Questions for The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Fiction)
The following book club questions provide a starting point for creating a reading group discussion on The Center Cannot Hold:
- Did Elyn R. Saks emphasize any specific themes throughout The Center Cannot Hold? What do you think Elyn R. Saks is trying to explain with this theme?
- What was unique about the setting of The Center Cannot Hold and how did it affect the storyline?
- Could you relate to any of the characters? If so, which ones and why?
- How do characters change or learn throughout The Center Cannot Hold? What events caused these changes? Have you or someone you know experienced the same thing?
- How does The Center Cannot Hold reveal Elyn R. Saks's own perspectives about people and the world? For a lively discussion, describe why you think Elyn R. Saks is liberal or conservative.
- Did certain parts of The Center Cannot Hold affect you emotionally? Why did it evoke those emotions?
- Did Elyn R. Saks's point of view on things lend new perspective to your own view of the world?
Book Club Questions for The Center Cannot Hold (for Non-Fiction)
Suggested Book Club Questions for The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Non-fiction)
The following book club questions provide a starting point for creating a reading group discussion on The Center Cannot Hold:
- Did Elyn R. Saks make persuasive arguments in The Center Cannot Hold? Did The Center Cannot Hold change or reinforce your opinion on the subject?
- What did you learn from The Center Cannot Hold?
- How does Elyn R. Saks present the information and did you enjoy it?
- How is Elyn R. Saks biased within The Center Cannot Hold? Is there a political slant to what is being discussed and how does it impact the book?
- What, if anything, does The Center Cannot Hold make you want to read next? Why?
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