In her frank memoir, Men Have Called Her Crazy, artist Anna Marie Tendler discusses her lifelong struggle with self-harm as well as her "sort of photographic memory for the ways men have asserted their power over me." Centering on Tendler's voluntary hospitalization for psychiatric assessment in early 2021, the memoir alternates between her past and present, which involves treatment and recovery. Tendler expresses a tendency to lose focus on that present due to her worry over the future or her anger about the past, linking every perceived failure--including a meandering career, unsuccessful relationships, and messing up homemade macarons--to "some greater personal deficiency." In deft, self-reflective prose ("I remained silent and still, my cells entombing the implosion of panic"), Tendler writes candidly about patriarchy and misogyny, their social impacts, and her lived experiences and "overwhelming feeling that all men are some version of problematic."
There's a slight dissonance between Tendler's acknowledgement of her own privilege in the quality of care she can access (both for herself and her beloved French bulldog, Petunia) and her expressed distaste for men who are unaware of their own advantages. Nevertheless, it's balanced by her refusal to hold back as she recounts her journey toward being comfortable with physical and emotional solitude and tries to "reach a place where I can face hardship... without trying to destroy myself."
Tendler avoids the "person-becoming-whole-or-new" trappings of the memoir genre, focusing instead on how she reconstructs herself, perpetually bandaging her wounds for an imperfect but ongoing healing--the kind that acknowledges the residual marks as she moves forward. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer