Sunnybrook: A True Story with Lies - Hardcover

Blackbridge, Persimmon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0889740682 ISBN 13: 9780889740686

Publisher: Raincoast Books, Press Gang Publishers, 1996

Synopsis

Sunnybrook: A True Story with Lies is the hilarious and angry story of a young woman who fakes her way into a job that changes her life. One cover-up follows another as Diane hides her learning disabilities from her new employer, the "Sunnybrook Institution for the Mentally Handicapped" and her girlfriend. But her dreams of becoming "a professional" are threatened by her identification with the inmates at Sunnybrook. And when Diane meets Shirley-Butch at the bar, her lesbian identity and her psychiatric history become irrevocably intertwined.
Moving back and forth between Diane's job and her personal life, Sunnybrook is by turns funny, tragic and sexy. It is a riveting and visually arresting story about a group of people whose lives are made up of small acts of resistance, who steal moments of joy whenever possible.

About this title

Review:

By claiming that she's had experience at a child guidance clinic, Diane fakes her way into a counseling job at the Sunnybrook Institution for the Mentally Handicapped. Her experience, however, was as a patient, not as an employee. At Sunnybrook she finds the patients more lively, creative, and sympathetic than the tired, harried staff. And at home, her relationship with her girlfriend starts to suffer after Diane meets the wild, edgy Shirley-Butch at a bar. Writer and artist Persimmon Blackbridge uses her straightforward prose as well as images of her intense, funny sculptures and assemblages to convey the complexities of Diane's story. The narrative is supplemented by optional readings in the margins that suggest variant realities. Both the content and the innovative form of this book remind us that our stories are many-textured, that everyone has a different version of reality.

About this edition

• Publisher: Raincoast Books, Press Gang Publishers
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0889740682
• ISBN 13: 9780889740686
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 87