Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton

4.35 AVERAGE

ddeacon's review against another edition

3.75
challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

yellowfive05's review

5.0
challenging dark emotional informative medium-paced
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cclift1114's review against another edition

4.0
challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced
While most of us know that mental health institutions have historically not been great, the book takes a deep dive into how those that served African American patients were that much worse. I appreciated how Hylton hits on the fact that, while black patients were often wrongfully admitted, it made sense for there to be some increased levels of anxiety and depression in black people at the time because of fear from things like lynchings. The myriad of injustices heaped upon these patients was an important thing to shine light on. 
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atuckerdye's review against another edition

4.0
emotional informative sad medium-paced

kvdspek's review

5.0
dark informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced
bcmcb07's profile picture

bcmcb07's review against another edition

4.25
challenging dark emotional informative

youngthespian42's review against another edition

2.75
emotional informative sad slow-paced

comptron's review

3.0
what this book reports is really important, definitely distressing. worth reading for the content, but the writing is not great and the narrative structure is alllllllll over the place.
jdubsmoore's profile picture

jdubsmoore's review

3.5
challenging dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced
This is a history of one Maryland asylum, Crownsville, from inception to its eventual closing. This asylum was designed to specifically house Black residents, but it was never equal interest of mental health facilities for whites. The author intertwined her own personal struggles with family members with mental illness. In the beginning, this made the narrative feel chaotic, but as the book continued, and the stories began to intertwine more and more, it made sense. This is a brutally honest narrative of how the political moves that created, changed, and finally dismantled the asylum system effected Black families and communities, mostly in negative ways, with some striking stories of success in recovery as well 
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kwachter's review

3.0
informative sad medium-paced