Book Review for A Party of One by J. Saburra
I received this book for free. This does not impact my review in any shape or form.
Party of One, by J. Saburra, is a poetry compilation about learning how to interact with yourself without going insane. The collection dives into the poet’s thoughts of how she feels she is portraying herself, versus how others may see her. She discusses the contradiction of longing for isolation and the desperation of needing someone. Poems like Exquisitely and The Repeater take famous coping skills like mindfulness and use them to detail how intrusive the world can be, and despite all it has to offer, ask the reader whether or not they truly want to be a part of it.
As you may or may not know, I have clients who are diagnosed with some very stigmatizing mental illnesses. When they were first diagnosed, no one knew what was going on, and of course, they, as well as their loved ones, were scared. We encourage people to be involved with their communities. But some of those communities don’t want those individuals to return, no matter how unfair, or even cruel, it is. And of course, when you go through an experience like that, it’s natural you’d want to shut the world out. But then there are other spaces you carve for yourself in different areas of life, and you prefer that small, but cozy home versus the overwhelming noise that is the outside world. Whether you want to believe it or not, that’s okay.
Still, one of the poems that I truly enjoyed was Keep it between us. A lot of people feel that they’d rather hide themselves than expose their vulnerabilities to others, especially when it comes to their mental health and/or how they identify. Again, because strangers can be cruel, especially those online, you don’t know how they’ll respond to anything outside their comforts. We all like to think that we’re saints, but at the end of the day, we’re just as ugly as we are beautiful.
Just like Saburra’s other collections, I enjoyed this book. While I would’ve preferred more humor so that the reader could lie to themselves a bit more, just for comfort’s sake, I would give this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars.
