Janet Sternburg

White Matter by Janet Steinburg is the second book in her three part memoir. It and the other volumes are unusual as memoirs because they explore questions that she had. I have only read this book but I am very interested in the other two after reading this one.

I must say for those like me, this book will be a physical challenge to read because it is written in such tiny print. The author probably had no choice in the matter, I am stating this because although I was fascinated by this memoir, it was difficult to read because of the print size.

The question that she explores in this book is her mother’s family, a Jewish family living in Boston decided to have her uncle Benny lobotomized. Her grandmother and aunts came together on the decision in 1940. For those who are not familiar with the term a prefrontal lobotomy was a surgery done in the 1940s and 1950s to calm the patient by cutting the white fibers that connect the thalamus to the prefrontal and frontal lobes of the brain. This had the effect of turning the patient into a person devoid of all emotions. Besides exploring her own emotion reactions to this, she also informs us with the history of lobotomies. I was shocked to learn that at one time there was a lobotomobile.

I picked this book to read because I remember my father visiting his sister in the state hospital. I sat in the car because I had met her. Now I wish that I had. I strongly remember him saying “at least they didn’t lobotomize her”. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. But now I have a much fuller picture of what a person is like after it. This operation is was very popular at one time because there were no drugs to deal with mental illness effectively. It is such a drastic operation that is easy to see why the author probed the question. Some plausible reasons are given as the answer by the author.

I applaud Janet Sternburg for bringing this subject out into the open, it must have been very painful to explore what lead up to the operation. I highly recommend this book to anyone with mental illness in their family.
I received this finished copy from the publisher as a win from FirstReads but that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in this review.… (altro)