Inferno ★★★★★

Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★★

Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho is a memoir about a woman experiencing post partum psychosis.

I read this as an audiobook on loan from the library and read by the author.

Cat is a Korean-American woman who leads us through her experience from past traumas in her childhood and a prior domestic violence relationship to the meet-cute with her husband and their whirlwind love and marriage leading to the birth of their son Cato. In Korean superstition, the mother and the baby are not supposed to leave the house for 21 days. The mothers first meal is also supposed to be a seaweed soup made my her mother with the seaweed rinsed many times. Cat decides not to adhere to these superstitions and additionally decides to take a family trip to America. The trip ends up being more stressful than anticipated and slowly Cat becomes psychotic, at one point believing Cato has devil eyes and God is telling her he must die. Cat ends up involuntarily committed to a behavioral health hospital where she she slowly regains her sanity over the course of 12 days.

This book is fantastic. Cho does an incredible job of balancing the descriptions of her psychosis with memories leading up to that point with Korean cultural norms with statistics of postpartum psychosis. I highly recommend this book and thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you liked Inferno, I also recommend The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang, Cracked, Not Broken by Kevin Hines, Girl, Interrupted by Susan Kaysen, and The Changeling by Victor LaValle.

Happy reading!

Ms.Bjork