Edited by L. D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh
North Atlantic Books
7/9/2019, paperback
SKU: 9781623173616
25 unflinching stories and essays from the front lines of the radical mental health movement.
Overmedication, police brutality, electroconvulsive therapy, involuntary hospitalization, traumas that lead to intense altered states and suicidal thoughts: these are the struggles of those labeled "mentally ill." While much has been written about the systemic problems of our mental-health care system, this book gives voice to those with personal experience of psychiatric miscare often excluded from the discussion, like people of color and LGBTQ+ communities. It is dedicated to finding working alternatives to the "Mental Health Industrial Complex" and shifting the conversation from mental illness to mental health.
About the Editors:
L. D. Green is a queer writer, performer, educator, and mental health advocate whose work has been published in The Body is Not an Apology webzine, Sinister Wisdom, Foglifter, sPARKLE + bLINK, and truth-out.org. She is a poetry slam champion and has performed at the National Queer Arts Festival and the San Francisco Fringe Festival. A graduate of Vassar College, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and is a Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction. She participated in the Tin House Writers Workshop and was a Catwalk Artist in Residence. She was involved in the Bay Area chapter of The Icarus Project (a support network and education project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness) from 2009-2011 and has given presentations for Youth in Mind at the California Mental Health Advocates for Children and Youth. As an assistant professor of English at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, California, she teaches composition, creative writing, and literature. She writes and enjoys poetry, creative non-fiction, and speculative fiction.
Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American writer, mental health advocate, and public speaker. She was the first undergraduate ever published in the New York Times. Ubozoh was featured in the SAMSHA Voice Award-Winning documentary The S Word, which follows the lives of suicide attempt survivors in an effort to end the stigma and silence around suicide. Her story is featured in the January 2019 edition of O, The Oprah Magazine and on the Good Morning America website. Ubozoh has appeared on The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast hosted by comedian Paul Gilmartin, presented at Cornell University, and been featured on CBS This Morning with Gayle King. A popular presenter and keynote speaker, Ubozoh has supervised mental health stigma discrimination reduction programs and led communication operations at a mental health nonprofit organization, PEERS. Her poetry was recently published in an anthology of San Francisco Bay Area writers of color, Endangered Species, Enduring Values. She currently works as a peer and community engagement manager at CalMHSA.