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

Title: Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Author: Antonia Hylton

Series/Standalone: Standalone

Genre: Nonfiction, History, Race, Mental Health

Pages: 368

Publisher: Legacy Lit

Year Published: 2024

Format: Audiobook 

"On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state's Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.

In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93 year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade's worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family's experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.

As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting over 1,500 acres, the instituation ebcame a microcosm of America's evolving battles over slavery, racial integration and civils rights. During its peak years, the hospital's wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th- century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America's new focus.

In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people's bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare systems. It is a captivating and heartbreaking mediation on how America decides who is sick or criminal and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable."

My Rating: 5/5

As intense as this book is, I feel it is incredibly important to learn about. How race impacts healthcare and how prejudice affects the care that is offered for individuals. It also made some valid points. Did we stop institutions just to move people into a box and criminalize their mental health? The idea that the same symptoms in a white patient vs a black patient, even now results in such different care or lack thereof, is crazy to me. 

Thanks for reading,

Sidny

Book Review: Four Weeks, Five People by Jennifer Yu

Title: Four Weeks, Five People
Author: Jennifer Yu
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre: Mental Health, Young Adult, Contemporary
Pages: 384
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Year Published: 2017
Format: Hardcover (Own It)
First Line: "A few words of advice for those attending Camp Ugunduzi for the first time:"

"They're more than their problems.

Obsessive-compulsive teen Clarissa wants to get better, if only so her mother will stop asking her if she's okay.

Andrew wants to overcome his eating disorder so he can get back to his band and their dreams of becoming famous.

Film aficionado Ben would rather live in the movies than in reality.

Gorgeous and overly confident Mason things everyone is an idiot.

And Stella just doesn't want to be back for her second summer of wilderness therapy.

As the five teens get to know one another and work to overcome the various disorders that have affected their lives, they find themselves forming bonds they never thought they would, discovering new truths about themselves and actually looking forward to the future."

My Rating: 4/5

I think that this book is an important read for all youth, but I also think that it was just a case of right book wrong time for me. In another time I might have rated this book a 5/5, but it just didn't seem to click with me 100% this time when I read it. That being said, I really loved the characters and the diverse cast. I think it's important to realize with mental illness that it doesn't just have one face, gender or race. It can look different on everyone. 
I also appreciated the idea that it takes time to heal and get better, it's not immediate and not all the characters in the book were magically "cured" which is something I hate.

Thanks for reading,
Sidny

Spoiler: Four Weeks, Five People by Jennifer Yu

I think that I explained my thoughts in the review about how this book probably would have been 5/5 stars if I had been in the right mindset. It was really promising to start but I found the potential romances to be slightly annoying. That being said I enjoyed the diversity of the characters and their illnesses. It wasn't stereotypical, as the characters were not miraculously cured. It really makes you think about the time it takes to feel better and how it isn't a forever cure in most cases. 

Characters:
Adam: He broke my heart into a million pieces. I understood how he felt so helpless and how he wanted to get better but wasn't able to do the follow through because the idea of being better was amazing, but the getting there was harder than expected. I would hope with time he would be able to recover.

Stella: I think that I related to her the most. The feeling of giving up and rationalizing whether recovering is even worth it. I'm viewed often as being the most pessimistic in my friend group.  Also, the way she reacted to those around her, she seemed callous but the more you got to know her the more you realized that she was too scared to become attached.

Clarissa: I was very interested in her perspective, especially since at the start of the story her OCD was influencing her life so negatively, but as I read, I was a little disappointed that it seemed her relationship with Ben is what really helped her. At the same time, I think that being around people who have similar conditions.

Ben: I was also curious about the way his emotions flowed. I was curious to see how that would pan out in the everyday world and continue to wonder about this.

Mason: This is something I think that was hard to swallow, his character flaws are actually mental illness symptoms.

Jessie: I'm not sure I agree with her tactics of breaking Stella out of her shell, but it seemed to work better for her than the hippie-dippie stuff. 

Josh: I think his hippie ways kind of made me happy. He really believed in what he was doing and that it would work to help these teens. 

Moments to Remember:

Final Line: "And maybe, for now, that's good enough for me."

Thanks for reading,
Sidny

Book Review: Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley

Title: Highly Illogical Behavior
Author: John Corey Whaley
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Pages: 250
Publisher: Dial Books
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBT, Mental Health
Year Published: 2016
Format: Audiobook


"Sixteen-year-old Solomon is an agoraphobic. He hasn't left the house in three years, where is fine by him.

Ambitious Lisa desperately wants to get into the second-best psychology program for college (she's being realistic). But is ambition alone enough to get her in?

Enter Lisa.

Determined to 'fix' Sol, Lisa steps into his world, along with her charming boyfriend, Clark, and soon the three form an unexpected bond. But, as Lisa learns more about Sol and he and Clark grow closer and closer, the walls they've built around themselves start to collapse and their friendships threaten to do the same."

My Rating: 4/5

I got this audiobook when I found out it included mental health elements as well as an LGBT main character. These are two things that when represented in YA either go over very well or poorly with an audience. I really enjoyed this book overall. It definitely has some anxiety triggers which should be anticipated based on our main characters illness. I think that this novel did a great job of showing how people with a mental illness feel and how those around them might feel. It really encompassed what panic feels like and how panic can affect a person's everyday life. It also did an interesting job in speaking about the idea of "fixing" someone which a lot of people agree is not the way to think of helping people with mental health. As someone who has both known people with mental health problems and has experienced them herself, it was frustrating to have the idea that one character planned on fixing someone, but throughout the novel you see a different approach taken towards someone who might need help.

Thanks for reading,
Sidny

Spoiler: Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley

If you guys are looking for a quick and diverse book I would definitely recommend it to young adult readers. This short book encompasses so much. The idea of mental illness, mental health, LGBT, teenage angst, and the walls we all put around us. 

I think that this author did a magnificent job showing the idea that "fixing" someone is not the right approach to helping someone with a mental illness, and while I've never experienced agoraphobia, I understand anxiety and panic attacks. I also thought the many perspectives we witness in the book were interesting. The friend who follows Christianity standards, the mom who thinks that being gay is a choice, the people around Sol who see him as he really is,  and those on the outside looking in assuming how things are.


Characters (Just to name a few):
Soloman: His character is so fleshed out for only have 250 pages worth of story. I think the fact that he follows his urges to get help and find what he can manage. The ideas that swarm his brain, made me feel for him so much and I loved that he was working towards doing what he could, knowing that he may never be "better", as so many people expected him to be. I loved the way we left his story in the end! Beautiful.

Lisa: I docked a whole star for this ass hole. I did not like her the majority of the book. She just seemed to have a lot of trouble remembering that not everything was about her. And while she helped Soloman, I think that he needed a friend, not another person trying to make him "better". And this is why I loved the essay in the back of the book. She grew so much as a character, thank goodness. 

Clark: I liked how chill he was. I think he really helped Soloman and gave him something to hope for.

Soloman's Parents: I know a lot of adults might give them shit about letting Soloman stay home. And it's not that they didn't care, in fact, they cared more than so many. Anxiety is often crippling and they understood this and didn't push him if he wasn't ready. Maybe that's what helped him see what he might be able to do on a good day.

Lisa's Mom: She clearly has some mental health issues, and doesn't seem to care that those around her are affected by her actions. At the same time, the way she speaks with Lisa was so frustrating. To see her be the type of person to write it off on Soloman's parents, or a trend was frustrating as an open minded person. It leads me to realise that many people deal with judgements like these more often than being met with an open minded opinion.

Thanks for reading,
Sidny