Seven-year-old Noel has not made a sound since birth. There's nothing wrong with him physically. Something was done to him. Barely surviving in backwoods poverty, he communicates with a small bell tethered to his wrist. Although he has no language, we use our own as we enter his mind and heart to experience what he sees, feels and thinks. He rings his bell to show his love for his father and teenage sister. It trembles in fear when his alcoholic and verbally and physically abusive mother assaults him or his sister with a belt. Noel seeks refuge in the peacefulness of the woods around him and...

Humpty-Dumpty Sister is my attempt to give voice to my sister's life and death with schizophrenia. When I was fourteen and on my way to school early one day, the doorbell rang in our NYC apartment. There stood my seventeen-year old sister, Charmion, her stockings fallen to her knees, her dress crumpled, and tears pouring out of her eyes. She begged not to have to go to school. Our mother enfolded Charmion into her arms, hushed her and whispered to me: "Go to school. She'll be all right." But she was not all right; ever again. She had taken her first fall into paranoid schizophrenia, becoming...