Memoirs and Madness

Memoirs and Madness PDF Author: Frederick H. White
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773560084
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
"Memoirs and Madness examines memoir as a literary genre and investigates how Leonid Andreev's posthumous legacy was influenced by the writing of his contemporaries. A Book About Leonid Andreev (1922), which includes the work of renowned Russian authors such as Belyi, Blok, Chukovskii, Chulkov, Gor'kii, Teleshov, Zaitsev, and Zamiatin, has had an impact on how Andreev has been read and spoken about since his death. While past scholarship has focused on the philosophical and sociological factors in Andreev's life, Frederick White pays special attention to the author's history of mental illness, described by the memoirists with vague terms such as "creative energy" or "inner turmoil."" --Résumé de l'éditeur.

Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted PDF Author: Susanna Kaysen
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804151113
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (The New York Times Book Review). WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

Committed

Committed PDF Author: Paolina Milana
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1647420431
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
After a decade of caring for crazy and keeping her mother’s mental illness a secret from the outside world, twenty-year-old Paolina Milana longs for just one year free from the madness of her home. When she gets the chance to go to an out-of-state school, she takes it, but her family won’t leave her be. Letter after letter arrives, constantly reminding her of the insanity rooted in her family tree. Even worse, the voices in her own head whisper words she’s not sure are normal. “Please don’t make me be like Mamma,” she prays to a God she’s not sure is listening. The unexpected death of her father soon after she returns home leaves Paolina in shock—and in charge of her paranoid schizophrenic mother. But it isn’t until she is twenty-seven and her sister two years her junior explodes in a psychotic episode and, just like Mamma, is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and must be committed, that Paolina descends into her own despair, nearly losing herself to the darkness. Poignant and impactful, Committed is one woman’s story of resilience as she struggles to stay sane despite the madness that surrounds her.

Another Kind of Madness

Another Kind of Madness PDF Author: Stephen Hinshaw
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250113369
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Parallel to An Unquiet Mind and The Glass Castle, a deeply personal memoir calling for the destigmatization of mental illness

Gorilla and the Bird

Gorilla and the Bird PDF Author: Zack McDermott
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316315117
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"Glorious...one of the best memoirs I've read in years...a tragicomic gem about family, class, race, justice, and the spectacular weirdness of Wichita. [McDermott] can move from barely controlled hilarity to the brink of rage to aching tenderness in a single breath." -- Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Book Review Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital. So begins the story of Zack's freefall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often hilarious struggle to claw his way back to sanity. It's a journey that will take him from New York City back to his Kansas roots and to the one person who might be able to save him, his tough, big-hearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack's dark world. Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy Seal and his talking stuffed monkey, and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird's help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a partner who can love him back, bipolar and all. Introducing an electrifying new voice, Gorilla and the Bird is a raw and unforgettable account of a young man's unraveling and the relationship that saves him.

Instrumental

Instrumental PDF Author: James Rhodes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632866986
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
"An intense, eloquent, and appropriately furious memoir with the transporting beauty of classical music . . . The cumulative effect of the literary concert [Rhodes] gives in these pages is transcendence, both for him and for the reader." --Los Angeles Review of Books “A mesmeric combination of vivid, keen, obsessive precision and raw, urgent energy.” --Zoe Williams, The Guardian James Rhodes's passion for music has been his lifeline--the thread that has held through a life encompassing abuse and turmoil. But whether listening to Rachmaninov on a loop as a traumatized teenager or discovering a Bach adagio while in a hospital ward, he survived his demons by encounters with musical miracles. These--along with a chance encounter with a stranger--inspired him to become the renowned concert pianist he is today. Instrumental is a memoir like no other: unapologetically candid, boldly outspoken, and surprisingly funny--shot through with a mordant wit, even in its darkest moments. A feature film adaptation of Rhodes's incredible story is now in development from Monumental Pictures and BBC Films, following a competitive bidding war involving major U.S. and U.K. companies. An impassioned tribute to the therapeutic powers of music, Instrumental also weaves in fascinating facts about how classical music actually works and about the extraordinary lives of some of the great composers. It explains why and how music has the potential to transform all of our lives.

History Lessons

History Lessons PDF Author: Clifton Crais
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
ISBN: 9781468310177
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An acclaimed scholar tackles his greatest historical puzzle yet--his own abused past and tortured memory

Surrounded By Madness

Surrounded By Madness PDF Author: Rachel Pruchno
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781087912950
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
"What was the likelihood my adopted daughter would have my father's hazel eyes and my mother's mental illness?" In this fiercely candid memoir, Dr. Pruchno, a scientist widely acclaimed for her research on mental illness and families, shows how mental illness threatened to destroy her own family. Not once, but twice. As a child, she didn't understand her mother's episodes of crippling sadness or whirlwind activity. As a mother, she feared her daughter Sophie would follow in the footsteps of the grandmother Sophie never knew. Unraveling the mysteries of her mother's and daughter's illnesses, Pruchno fought to preserve her marriage and protect her son. But it was not until she came to terms with her own secrets that she truly understood the destructive and pervasive effects mental illness has on families. Surrounded By Madness is transforming. It will empower families to stop hiding and start talking when mental illness strikes.

Memoirs and Madness

Memoirs and Madness PDF Author: Frederick H. White
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773560084
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
"Memoirs and Madness examines memoir as a literary genre and investigates how Leonid Andreev's posthumous legacy was influenced by the writing of his contemporaries. A Book About Leonid Andreev (1922), which includes the work of renowned Russian authors such as Belyi, Blok, Chukovskii, Chulkov, Gor'kii, Teleshov, Zaitsev, and Zamiatin, has had an impact on how Andreev has been read and spoken about since his death. While past scholarship has focused on the philosophical and sociological factors in Andreev's life, Frederick White pays special attention to the author's history of mental illness, described by the memoirists with vague terms such as "creative energy" or "inner turmoil."" --Résumé de l'éditeur.

Writing Madness, Writing Normalcy

Writing Madness, Writing Normalcy PDF Author: Lisa Spieker
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476682275
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
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? 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.

Mad Muse

Mad Muse PDF Author: Jeffrey Berman
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1789738075
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Many of the well-respected scholarly studies of autobiographical writing have little or nothing to say about mental illness. This book uncovers the mysterious relationship between mood disorders and creativity through the lives of seven writers, demonstrating how mental illness is sometimes the driving force behind creativity.