A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott is an eclectic memoir about writing, family life, and mental health that centres around the Mohawk phrase for depression, which can be translated into English as “a mind spread out on the ground”. Written with love, this book is made up of references to tv shows, comic books, and fairytales, which are all used to contextualize Elliott’s own experience as a white and Haudenosaunee mixed race kid growing up between the States and Canada. A lifetime in the making, this book brings its readers on an exploration of colonialism, pop culture, depression, and, above all else, words.
This book seems to stem from Elliott’s complicated relationship with words, one she seeks to soothe by diving deeply into the meanings and histories of words. This is the book where the dictionary is only the start of the story, something to be glanced at and then thrown away as Elliott emerges us in a world where words are heavy and real, something you can hold and kick and push away and that break wide open when you examine your own relationship with them like Elliott does. Instead of being unchangeable or taken for granted, words like “beauty”, “abuse”, “race”, and heck even “selfie” are explored with care and honesty.
My favourite chapter in this book is “Sontag in Snapshots: Reflecting on ‘In Plato’s Cave’” which went into detail about our current culture of photo taking and sharing on anything from social media to crime scenes. Is the view from your phone or (if you still have one) camera different from what you would see with our own eyes? Does that difference make enough of an impact on our lives to even be worth examining? “Are our experiences made more real when they’re witnessed?” Elliott’s ability to take even the most commonplace occurrences and, through methodical research and storytelling, open her readers up to a more complicated perspective is as powerful as it is subtle.
Apparently non-fiction books had a leap in popularity in the past year, and books like this one make me understand why. A Mind Spread out on the Ground is a beautiful cure for numbness and apathy which takes on some of the collective questions that we’ve had to deal with over the past few years. What does it mean to a community to experience collective loss? Can a metaphor capture the true weight of depression? Shifting across the Canada–United States border throughout the course of this book and speaking about being mixed race in both places, Elliott takes on our fractured world with patience and grace, crafting a book that is entirely worth the read.