The Color of Madness

About the Book

The Color of Madness is the true story of my eldest sister, Ciska, second of nine offspring. Some may recognize themselves or a loved one or an acquaintance in this individual, who watches the horizon of her hopes recede as she grows older and becomes more aware of her world. After winning a much-coveted scholarship at the age of eleven, Ciska’s future promises to be as bright as the firework hurled over the fence into the backyard by neighbors eager to congratulate her and the family. However, like a shooting star, she very briefly lights up the world around her with her brilliance before disintegrating into oblivion. Indeed, her inability to adapt to absurd racial biases will plunge her loved ones into daily havoc and challenge her sanity. Consequently, Ciska repudiates a world that rejects her and seeks refuge among the insane in an attempt to preserve her sanity.

About the Author

Krystal Black is a bilingual poetry-writer born in a francophone British colony. She spent the first nineteen years of her life on that multiethnic island-country often heralded for its racial harmony. She then migrated to Germany, where she worked in telecommunications before meeting and following her husband to the US. There, she pursued a degree in Education. As a graduate student, she taught college French on teaching assistantships before embarking on a twenty-six-year career as a public school teacher. The story of Ciska, a young woman suffering from schizophrenia, is not unique but had to be told nonetheless. And who could tell it better than someone whose life experiences closely parallel those of the main character without leading to the same fate. Indeed, as a younger sister, the author of The Color of Madness has firsthand knowledge of the tragic life story of her sibling. Krystal Black loses no time in pointing the finger at the real culprit in Ciska’s story—racism. Not sexism, not classism, not ageism, not cultism. Indeed, most, if not all, of Ciska’s life experiences that humiliate, negate, and repudiate involve her racial identity from early childhood to young adulthood with special emphasis on adolescence.