“Don’t worry Claire, you have my genes.” This said by my British astrophysicist father when I called to ask why he had failed to disclose my mother’s actual mental health diagnosis for several years. A man so reticent I didn’t even know he held the John D. MacArthur professorship at Caltech until I did a bit of sleuthing for my memoir, A Room with a Darker View: Chronicles of My Mother and Schizophrenia. You can read the essay here.

Grateful to Books Editor Joseph Salvatore of The Brooklyn Rail for the opportunity to be in conversation with acclaimed memoirist Emily Rapp Black on the writing of her latest nonfiction book, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg : a work of great bravura that will undoubtedly find itself a classic among the robust literature on Kahlo.