836 reviews for:

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Antonia Hylton

4.36 AVERAGE

marywoodard's review

4.0

challenging informative slow-paced

anna_springer's review

4.5

challenging informative sad

kaemerrill's review

2.0

challenging dark informative sad tense slow-paced

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It was a struggle for me to get into the book. It was interesting but it took forever to get through it. Non fiction books like this aren’t really my thing but my book club was reading it.

meagrutig's review

4.0

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

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This has definitely changed the way I view the world and is a book I will be thinking about for a long time. It’s incredibly sad and hard to read at times but does end hopeful. I was really struck by the asylum to prison transition - something that I think a lot of us intuitively know but to see the process actually laid out was eye-opening. I did find the structure a bit confusing - it jumped around in time quite a bit and with so many names, I had a hard time keeping track of the through-line. However, that didn’t impact my understanding of what the book was intending to show. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Mental illness, Racism, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Medical trauma

Moderate: Gore, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Medical content, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Sexual assault, Excrement

toberead_eventually's review against another edition

3.0

challenging dark informative reflective sad slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement, Mental illness, Racism, Violence, Medical content

jpresteg's review

4.0

challenging informative sad medium-paced

mollskb87's review

4.25

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

janerc's review

4.5

challenging informative sad tense slow-paced

lizhajek's review against another edition

3.75

challenging emotional informative slow-paced

kristinfg3's review

4.5

challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense