Book description
Clickety Clack is Joy McDiarmid's self- portrait of bipolar
mental illness and one of the most ambiguous sexual identities
imaginable for a woman coming of age in the 1950s. Amidst gender and
sexuality confusion, this Winnipeg woman began to look for romantic
love and sexual fulfillment: sometimes wanting to dress as a man,
sometimes as a woman, sometimes attracted to men, sometimes to women.
In candid accounts of this paralysing complexity, which McDiarmid
tried valiantly to understand and express despite oppressive social
stigmas and parental strictures, her insights about human sexuality
and "living the lie" are startling even in this age of open
commentary about sex.
Along primitive frontiers of treatment for bipolar disorders and
dramas of shock therapy in psychiatric wards, entire years of
McDiarmid's life would slip by even as earlier years were being erased
from her memory. Yet there came triumphant accomplishments in her
competitive and stimulating world of advertising, university work,
private enterprise, photography, travel, touring in her MG sports car,
skilful tennis, and love.
Such juxtaposed experiences of despair and defiant courage,
supplemented at the end of each chapter with medical commentary by
Joy's psychiatrist Dr. Frances Edye, make Clickety Clack a
rare road map to life.
"I couldn't take Clickety Clack all in on the first
read, so I read it again, this time with my seat belt fastened. It is
a courageous act to take on a project and to write it all, especially
to revisit and face up again to those fearfully painful times. I have
learned about the author's evolved character and her life's trajectory
and I understand, too, how she could not not write this
book."
-Cynthia A. M. Powell, Fairfield,
Connecticut, childhood friend of Joy S. McDiarmid
JOY S. MCDIARMID trained as a research writer and successfully
concealed her struggles with mental health issues while excelling in a
career in public relations and communications in libraries, university,
and private enterprise in Canada, the United States, and overseas. She
lives in Manitoba.
