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

3.0

"The function of lynching was so much more than a bypassing of the justice system. It was a form of psychological terrorism [...] Each lynching stole the life of its victim, but it also wrought immeasurable trauma on every Black person who witnessed or heard the story.

Between 1889 and 1930, 3,724 people were lynched in the South; over four-fifths were Black. in almost every case, no serious effort was made to identify and punish lynchers.

How could you not go mad?"

The story of Crownsville Hospital - a segregated asylum that was literally built by its own patients - deserves to be told, and told widely. Antonia Hylton’s research, from grueling archival work to tracking down former employees for oral histories, is a remarkable achievement. I especially appreciate the time Hylton dedicated to placing Crownsville within a broader historical context (no institution exists in a vacuum) and I enjoyed reading about the small victories pulled off by the overworked and underpaid staff.

However, Madness was a really uneven reading experience for me. There were some patient stories that I absolutely flew through and others that felt like a complete slog. At times, the writing was dry, and certain narrative detours left me struggling to see how they would circle back to Crownsville. I worry that it may put off those readers who are less familiar with psychology and/or the history of mental institutions.

None of that discredits the the stories and research Hylton has put out into the world. I just wish that the presentation was tweaked a bit