Strength vs fragility — author Michelle Kekana on exploring women’s mental health through fiction

This should be a book review but because I am impatient and too excitable, it will be a look at the author behind one of Jacana Media's latest titles, The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women. For better or worse the conversation about mental health has become mainstream, but for black women it is still something that is seen and not addressed.

Michelle Kekana’s debut follows three modern South African women who find themselves brought to breaking point as they navigate the complexities of life, love and mental health. Utterly engrossing from the first page, The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women is a bold exploration of what it means to be “strong”.

Kekana says she decided to follow three characters because she wanted to emphasise that mental health illnesses manifests differently in different people from all walks of life. The story was important to write because “it’s something that is experienced but not talked about. Mental health is a very taboo topic in black communities, unless you are raving mad or you have schizophrenia or you are stuffing papers into your panties. Anything less than that is just completely ignored.

“If you are experiencing depression, for example, without a perceivable outward cause, then people dismiss it as attention grabbing and attention seeking and ingratitude. It’s like that running joke on Twitter where they say your parent would say how can you be depressed when there is so much meat in the fridge,” Kekana explains as we both laugh at the reference.

In the book one of the characters, in planning a suicide, she thinks about how to make her death as convenient as possible for those around her, such as doing it close to pay day so they can have money for initial preparations. This gives a clear picture of the mental gymnastics it takes to be an adult, and if you are mentally unwell these thought processes and actions can be debilitating and overwhelming.

The book explores themes around mental strength, garnering hope and self-discovery. “It’s worse when you are a  woman, I think, because we do a lot of the emotional labour in most households so we are not allowed to crumble, at all. So I was trying to contrast the strength that is expected with the fragility that is experienced in fiction form,” Kekana said.

An excerpt: Making the resolution to end it all fills me with an odd type of peace. My inner turmoil is silenced. A Saturday seems like the most logical day. For one, my mother can have the funeral the following Saturday. This gives her six full days to plan. Funerals in my community are big, expensive undertakings. We slaughter livestock to feed the masses of mourners. Funerals are so expensive they have been known to bankrupt families. Clever blacks like my mother offset the possibility of bankruptcy by having funeral policies that ensure the send-off is elaborate.

The book continues in this style that pulls you into what informs these women, their worlds and contexts. Asked what she hopes people will take away from the book, Kekana says: “I hope the characters breathe for the reader, I hope they don’t sound made up, I hope people see aspects of themselves or people they know. I’ve always thought that good literature is real literature; you want to read a piece of fiction and think, actually that is the truth.”

Although this is her debut book in fiction, Kekana has long been in the literary space. She was a 2021 JIAS Writing Fellow and has contributed to an anthology of essays exploring post-apartheid South Africa. She is a  former teacher and considers herself a lifelong learner. 

In Michelle Kekana’s debut novel, three modern South African women find themselves brought to breaking point as they navigate the complexities of life, love and mental health. (Photo: Supplied)

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