Writing Madness Writing Normalcy

<p> What does it mean to be mad in contemporary American society? How do we categorize people's reactions to extreme pressures trauma loneliness and serious mental illness? Importantly--who gets to determine these classifications and why?</p><p> This book seeks to answer these questions through studying an increasingly popular media genre--memoirs of people with mental illnesses. Memoirs like the ones examined in this book often respond to stigmatizing tropes about the mad in popular culture and engage with concepts in mental health activism and research. This study breaks new academic ground and argues that the featured texts rethink the possibilities of community building and stigma politics. Drawing on literary analysis and sociological concepts it understands these memoirs as complex at times even contradictory approaches to activism.</p>