cclift1114 's review for:

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

4.0

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

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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.