Acclaimed Toronto storyteller Dan Yashinsky has a different kind of story he’d like to tell, one that forced him to, in his words, “let go of every conventional idea about writing I’ve ever used before.” In I Am Full: Stories for Jacob, he weaves laughter and heartbreak to share the story of his youngest son, Jacob.
- I Am Full
- Dan Yashinsky
- Signature Editions
- $19.95 Paperback, 160 pages
- ISBN: 978-17-73241-27-2
“This book was born in a time of paralyzing grief,” says Yashinsky, who started collecting these stories six months after Jacob’s tragic death at age 26, and began compiling them into a book – narrated in Jacob’s voice – at the urging of his older son, Nathaniel.
“Imagining Jacob’s voice narrating his stories was a form of solace,” Yashinsky shares, “as well as a way to think of these stories as literature, and not only my personal recollections.”
Yashinsky has been active in Toronto’s storytelling scene for decades, and his sense for the rhythm and humour of language rubbed off on his son. Jacob, Yashinsky says, “had a keen sense of suspense, a strong sense of absurd humour, and a wonderful gift with language – three qualities that make storytelling possible.”
A humorous thread adds an undercurrent of levity to the ups and downs of Jacob’s struggles. Jacob lived with a devastating condition called Prader-Willi Syndrome, which among other things causes behavioural challenges, hyperphagia (the inability to feel full), and in Jacob’s case, diabetes, addiction, and episodes of psychosis.
But Jacob became an advocate for people with PWS and other disabilities, delivering a stunning keynote at a Guelph gala just months before his passing – it can be found on YouTube under the title “I Am Jacob Zavitz!”
Yashinsky hopes that this book is, in a way, a continuation of Jacob’s advocacy. “I hope people realize that a PWS life can include enormous joy, humour, intellectual development, creativity, and self-expression,” he says, and I Am Full makes his intention repeatedly evident with its heartfelt, honest, and hilarious stories about the complexity of Jacob’s life.
The reader discovers Jacob the jeweller, Jacob the fisherman, and Jacob the proud Toronto Police Service crossing guard. Readers learn about his childhood poetry, his young-adult turmoil, and the satisfaction he found later in life, though not necessarily in that order!
“Being a non-chronological account means the reader doesn’t have the safety of a calendar-based way of storytelling,” Yashinsky says. “I think of it as a kind of 360-degree perspective, where the reader is always in the middle of Jacob’s life, no matter at what age ‘he’ is narrating.” The effect is both striking and lively, and allows Yashinsky to combine elements from different parts of Jacob’s life.
Particularly moving is the way Yashinsky connects images born from Jacob’s passing with those things that were touchstones for him in life.
“Out of a nightmare came what I hope is a book filled with as much laughter as tears,” concludes Yashinsky. “I want others to meet our son Jacob and learn why his life mattered, and how he showed such astonishing grace, courage, and wit in the face of really tough challenges.
“He was a real-life superhero, and a really sweet guy.”
