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: Told You So by Mayci Neeley

Title: Told You So

Author: Mayci Neeley

Series/Standalone: Standalone

Genre: Autobiography, Nonfiction,  Adult

Pages: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Year Published: 2025

Format: Audiobook (Library Copy)

"From TikTok and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Mayci Neeley, a deeply personal story of love, grief, motherhood and resilience.

Mayci Neeley and the women of MomTok burst into the center of pop culture when Hulu's The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives took the world by storm. But the show barely scratched the surface of Mayci's personal story. From becoming a mom at twenty, to losing her son's father in a tragic car accident, to going back to college as a single mother, she's only ever given us glimpses of the challenging things she's been through. Now, finally, she's ready to tell us everything.

In this inspiring and darkly funny memoir, Mayci lifts the veil for readers on what growing up Mormon is really like and how it's strict standards completely blow up for many young people when they get to college. When Mayci arrived at BYU on a tennis scholarship, she was unprepared to manage the temptations she'd been taught were sins. She found herself drinking too much, stuck in an abusive relationship and on the verge of falling down a dark and dangerous path. Suddenly, she was pregnant at nineteen and mourning a boyfriend she'd been building a future with. Mayci capture the period of college to adulthood with brutal honesty, grace and humor, offering up a heartfelt portrait of a woman finding her voice and her strength.

All of these trials led to her current love story, her journey with IVF, and of course the inside story of MomTok. Fans looking for a juicy play-by-play on the friend group drama will get everything they want- and then some- but more than anything, readers will walk away with a sense of confidence in themselves and an ability to wear their scars proudly."

My Rating: N.A

This is one of those stories I don't feel comfortable rating. The reason being its such a personal story, and based on trauma and very personal experiences. I have watched alot of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, I'll admit I love reality tv. So I knew who Mayci was and had a brief overview of her past but had no idea the detail this book would go into. I appreciate Mayci sharing her story and hope it touches those who feel unseen, etc. 

Thanks for reading,

Sidny

Book Review: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

Title: The Four Winds

Author: Kristin Hannah

Series/Standalone: Standalone

Genre: Historical Fiction, Adult Fiction

Pages: 464

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Year Published: 2021

Format: Audiobook (Library Copy)

"Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work, and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.

In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli- like so many of her neighbors- must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dreams, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation."

My Rating:5/5

After reading two other works by the author, I can't help but pick up any more historical fiction releases I see coming out. I listened to the audiobook for this novel, and couldn't recommend it more! The narration style lends to the story and helps add the gravity of the situation we see Elsa struggle through. As a Canadian, I didn't know much about the Dust Bowl at all. This was informative, but made me curious about how many things we don't know about each other as North Americans. Or just as people. How many histories go uncovered and stories left untold, especially from a female standpoint? I look forward to reading The Women soon, but first, at least a month to emotionally recover.

Thanks for reading,

Sidny

Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Title: The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Margaret Atwood

Series/Standalone: The Handmaid's Tale Series (Book #1)

Genre: Classics, Dystopian, Science Fiction

Pages: 320

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Year Published: 1985

Format: Paperback (Own It)

"The Handmaid's Tale is an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from the 'patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction' (New York Times) The Handmaid's Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describe life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to and going beyond, the repressive intolerence of teh original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population. The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the prose, by turns cool-eyed tender despairing, passionate, and wry she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment's calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusion. The Handmaid's Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning and a tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best."

My Rating: 4/5

This was a bit of a hard read. Not only for the emotional context and how it relates back to our current reality, but also the way it's written is a little confusing. I think though that this lends itself to the fearful and suspenseful telling of tale that feels to close to the world we current live. I'm looking forward to continuing the series, but I'm starting the television show as well.

Thanks for reading,

Sidny

Book Review: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Title: Starling House

Author: Alix E. Harrow

Series/Standalone: Standalone

Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Gothic, Adult Fiction

Pages: 308

Publisher: Tor Books

Year Published: 2023

Format: Audiobook (Library Copy)

"A grim and gothic new tale from Author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can't stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland- and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house- and its last lonely heir, Arthur Sterling- go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get ehr brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she's never had: a home.

As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

If Opal wants a home, she'll have to fight for it."

My Rating: 4.5/5

This tale follows Opal, who feels like an unreliable narrator, but is she? Her love for her brother pushes her to the extremes and makes the reader wonder, what would I do for the ones I love. It also follows Arthur and his trials and tribulations with the land he owns, and the nightmares that follow him. Overall, this is the tale of two people finding home in places they least expect, and confronting things one never thought possible, while maintaining the suspenseful and at time horror based elements. 

Thanks for reading,

Sidny