Demonic to Divine: The Double Life of Shulamis Yelin

A writer’s lifelong battle with mental illness.

Demonic to Divine: The Double Life of Shulamis Yelin is a weaving of the Montreal writer’s stories and selected diary excerpts and family photographs revealing a far-reaching creative personality who is haunted from the age of ten by the “moods taking over”.

This book poignantly illuminates the dramatic duality of a public and private literary and emotional life through published and unpublished stories of an idyllic Montreal Jewish childhood contrasted with deeply troubled and often shocking diary entries that document the author’s lifelong battle with mental illness.

Yelin’s insightful yet light and humorous stories have been cherished by generations of children and adults for their universal appeal. The journal entries that she maintained for most of her 90 years document the abuse, paranoia, self-loathing, doubt and devastating depression of Yelin’s true emotional state. These concurrent lenses reveal the profound struggles and suffering of a fascinating and highly gifted woman who transcended her ongoing deep-seated emotional agony to create a significant literary legacy.

The many threads of this multi-layered book have been woven together though the collaboration of Yelin’s daughter, Gilah Yelin Hirsch and Yelin’s first stories’ editor, Nancy Marrelli.

Reviews

“Fraught with rage and admiration and bewilderment, a daughter reaches the through the pages of time to heroically attempt to fathom her mother.  Shulamis Yelin, was both a successful writer and a mentally ill mother.  In this fascinating book, her daughter searches for understanding with fluctuating compassion . . . and finds love. –Michele Zackheim, author of Last Train to Paris and Einstein’s Daughter

“To read Demonic to Divine is to bear witness to a process of remembrance and healing that refuses to either condemn or exonerate this particular “crazy” mother. The book prompts contemplation on the political implications of mental illness in a world where sexism and other social oppressions prevent individuals from flourishing to their full potential.” -Kai Cheng Thom, Montreal Review of Books