22 NAPLES ILLUSTRATED
Mad LOVE
INSIDER
Q&A: ZACK McDERMOTT
Zack McDermott is a public defender, writer, and bipolar
gorilla. The author of Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of
Madness and a Mother’s Love, McDermott is a tragic hero
who feels no shame in telling the world about his psychotic
breaks, depression, and manic episodes. On the contrary, he
candidly recounts being on a subway platform in Brooklyn,
shirtless, barefoot, crying, and convinced he was being
filmed for a reality television show. Dazed and confused, he
was transported to Bellevue Hospital’s locked psychiatric
ward, the very same one that housed his insane clients, those
deemed unfit to stand trial. With grace and gratitude, he credits
his mother, Cindy Cisneros-McGilvrey, for keeping him
grounded in reality. “He is my son, and I would never give into
the idea that he was not going to return to his right mind,” she
says. McDermott and his mother will share their story at the
National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Twelfth Annual Hope
Shines Luncheon on December 7 at Grey Oaks Country Club,
Naples. McDermott recently spoke to NI about his deeply
personal and intimate memoir. (namicollier.org)NI: Where did the idea of writing this book
come from?
McDermott: I’ve always wanted to do some-
thing creative. When I first wrote Gorilla and
the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother’s
Love, I had just gotten out of the hospital after
my first psychotic break. I was on medical leave
and suffering from severe depression and ago-
raphobia and was still processing it all. I wrote
300 pages in a couple of months, put them in a
manila folder and forgot about them. I later de-
cided to get serious about writing a book, and it
took me about eight years from start to finish.
It seems like the book is an ode to your mom.
Did you have that in mind from the onset?
I didn’t sit down to write a book about my
mother, but it ended up becoming that in a lot
of ways. Its story is from the point of view of
someone who’s gone through a severe psychotic
break and takes you inside the mania and psy-
chosis. Then you have a profile of this superhero,
my mom, who is an inner-city schoolteacher and
a single mother raising three kids. She started
as a grocery store bagger and went on to earn
a PhD in education. She was living paycheck to
paycheck in Wichita, Kansas when she found
out her 26-year-old son, who had just graduatedfrom a top law school, was found disoriented on
a New York City subway platform and taken to
a psychiatric ward. After hearing I was in Bel-
levue, she put her Wichita life on hold and came
to the hospital for every minute of every visiting
opportunity. It couldn’t have been easy for her
to witness people screaming, fighting, getting
tackled, and injected with tranquilizers. But even
so, she never gave up on me.
How does your mom inspire you?
I’ve been totally shaped by her. Even with little
money, she would welcome anyone who needed
a place to go into our home. She started an after-
school tutoring group, and we would have the
Crips and Bloods sitting around our dinner table
while my mom helped them with their homework.
She instilled in me an oversized empathy. I think
it’s pretty contagious—in a good way.
What message do you want readers to take
away from this book?
One of the biggest aims in my book is to show
people what mental illness is and why you should
have empathy for [those] going through it. I feel
as if I won the lottery with having a good job, a
spot of creative talent, and people who support
me. Not everyone has that. We have to change
the way we approach that problem in society.Cindy Cisneros-McGilvrey nicknamed her son,
Zack McDermott, Gorilla because of his hairy
body and surly demeanor. He calls her Bird be-
cause she moves her head in choppy semicircles
when her feathers are ruffled.