In this episode of Modern Masculinity, Guardian journalist Iman Amrani speaks to writer Derek Owusu about his journey to being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). They discuss growing up in foster care, his positive experiences of the NHS and why he thinks it is so hard for black men to have open conversations about mental health.
This video references suicide and self harm.
Shortlist revealed for £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize
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A life in care isn’t what Tracy Beaker made it out to be I had grown up being told by the books I consumed that I was pre-determined to fail
By Kirsty Capes Jessica Lockett | Getty Images
When I was six, at a family friends’ party, I proudly announced to a stranger: I’m fostered . I had been experimenting with how to tell people that I was in care, how to out this fundamental part of my identity. My childlike approach was misguided. The stranger’s response, bizarrely, was to press a five-pound note into my hand. I was delighted with the money – more than I d ever had to myself – but his response, borne out of compassion, made me feel smaller in ways that I didn’t understand. Looking back now, I realise he was trying to help me in the only way he knew. But it made me see myself through his eyes: poor, alone and helpless; dependent, like Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois or Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, upon the kindness of strangers.
(Ryan Phillips/PA)
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Andy Charman, Rebecca Watson and Paul Mendez are among the authors who have been included on the longlist for the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize.
Named after the literary agent and publisher Desmond Elliott, the annual prize goes to a first novel written in English and published in the UK.
Charman’s Crow Court, Watson’s Little Scratch and Mendez’s Rainbow Milk are included on the longlist.
(Ryan Phillips/PA)
The Manningtree Witches by AK Blakemore, Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times, How We Are Translated by Jessica Gaitan Johannesson and JA Mensah’s Castles From Cobwebs have also been included.
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