Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Ever since her eccentric, rebellious mother entered assisted living, Colleen’s to-do list keeps growing. Her phone rings nonstop with demands.
I need cigarettes.
I’ve run out of toilet paper.
Mom's Cokes are nearly finished.
Have you paid the levy yet?
Meanwhile, Colleen is also raising her own daughter, holding together a marriage and business, and navigating a web of inherited mental health issues.
My Mother, My Madness is Colleen Higgs’s diary of her mother’s final ten years. At once funny, harrowing, mundane, chaotic, and full of insight, it chronicles the exhaustion, affection, guilt, resentment, and love that arise when the roles between parents and child reverse—and how she learns to find meaning in the madness.
As well as being a writer, Colleen Higgs is also a publisher, she started the ground-breaking independent southern African women's press, Modjaji Books in 2007. She lives in Cape Town with her daughter and a cat. Looking for Trouble is her first collection of short stories. She also has two collections of poetry Lava Lamp Poems (2011) and Halfborn Woman (2004) all published by Hands-On Books. She was recognised for her work in publishing by the Mail and Guardian, and was featured in their Book of Women 2011 in the Arts & Culture category.