Tanya Frank, ZIG-ZAG BOY: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Author Tanya Frank joins Zibby to discuss her gut-wrenching and compassionate new book Zig-Zag Boy: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood, which chronicles her son Zach’s sudden and inexplicable psychotic break at age 19 and her journey to accepting the mysteries of his altered states. Tanya talks about the day of the psychotic break and what her son had been like before it (precocious, kind, and UCLA-bound), her fear that their move to the US impacted him negatively, and her desperate quest to find an answer. She also shares her thoughts on our flawed medical system and archaic mental health laws and gives an update on Zach.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. |
| 0:06.7 | This 30-minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days a year, for about 30 minutes. |
| 0:14.9 | I am also the publisher for Zibi Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. |
| 0:21.9 | Our books are already out now. |
| 0:23.5 | You can check it out on ZippyBooks.com. |
| 0:25.6 | And we have a magazine called Zibby Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle |
| 0:31.2 | features. |
| 0:31.8 | That's at Zibbymag.com. |
| 0:33.1 | We have classes at Zippy Classes.com. |
| 0:35.4 | And I recently opened a bookstore in L.A. called Zibby's Bookshop |
| 0:40.3 | at 1-1-1-3 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in San Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of |
| 0:47.9 | our other offerings. But this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. |
| 0:56.1 | And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. Tanya Frank is the author of ZigZag Boy, a memoir of |
| 1:06.8 | madness and motherhood. And by the way, I think this is the first episode where I've cried myself |
| 1:11.5 | in a very long time. Tanya's bio, she wrote herself and says, from the time I was old enough to |
| 1:18.3 | decipher words, my Yiddisher mama told me stories, showing me what it meant to bear witness to |
| 1:23.1 | personal narratives. Growing up during the Thatcher era on a council housing estate where poverty was |
| 1:28.0 | rife, I was not considered college material and left school with no qualifications. |
| 1:32.6 | It wasn't until I had children of my own that I returned to education and got my teaching |
| 1:36.4 | degree. I have since worked as a college and university lecturer in the UK and taught middle |
| 1:41.2 | school children, teens, and elders in the USA. My first foray into writing |
| 1:45.1 | came when I won a competition in 1999 for a short television drama. The film Kissing Buba |
... |
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