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megmccreery 's review for:
Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
by Antonia Hylton
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I picked this up because I saw it in the BHM collection on Libby, and it was so interesting and equally enraging but I’m so glad that I read it. My jaw dropped over and over, and while I’m not surprised at any of the events that happened at Crownsville, it still is so shocking what humans can do to other humans and somehow justify it. I really liked the facts woven in with first-hand accounts and the people that we got to follow throughout the book; it made for a really interconnected narrative. Clearly this was so well-researched over many years, and that’s so impressive in itself, let alone making it interesting and easy to follow.
There’s so much history in a place like Crownsville, and it’s crazy to think how that was just one location out of so many in the country and how the macro-environment affected all that happened in those institutions. The way that this showed how we talk about mental health in the current day being directly tied to racism really shows how much progress there still is to make, and I’ll be taking a lot of what I learned from this with me.
There’s so much history in a place like Crownsville, and it’s crazy to think how that was just one location out of so many in the country and how the macro-environment affected all that happened in those institutions. The way that this showed how we talk about mental health in the current day being directly tied to racism really shows how much progress there still is to make, and I’ll be taking a lot of what I learned from this with me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Abandonment