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The Haunting of Shirley Jackson
Like all good ghost stories, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House sets a trap for its protagonist. In the classic version of the form, as established by the British writer M.R. James, the hero...
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Believing in the Animorphs Taught Me I Could Cope with Anything
As a child, I kissed our pet frog, hoping he’d turn into a boy who’d protect me from monstruos. The frog failed to metamorphose, so I tried again. And again. He was the only creature in our tank of...
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Teaching the Literature of Mad Women
We narrate our lives in terms of time—how long something lasted, when something began or ended. In doing so, we downplay the importance of place and position—the spaces where things occur, the spaces...
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Dana Levin and Carmen Giménez Smith Talk Race, Politics, and Poetics
Since 1999, with the publication of In the Surgical Theatre, Dana Levin has offered us incisive poems of dream and gut. About Sky Burial, her third book, Levin said, “The worms and the gods are...
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Brad Phillips: I Have Written Down the Worst of Me
Right now I’m worried I could be in over my head. I’m very weak. I’ve spent all day in bed. When I’ve tried to go out and smoke, it’s been hard to get my coat on, and I’ve only been able to smoke half...
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The Lesser Known Life Behind‘The Yellow Wallpaper’
“The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two...
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On Early 20th-Century America’s Unhealthy Fixation with ‘Hygiene’
Adolf Meyer never accepted that different approaches to mental illness were in conflict. All “facts,” from whatever source, were welcome and would, in due course, contribute to understanding and...
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On the Parenting Insights of the Non-Parent
Anyone under the age of 70 who writes a memoir gets condescended to, at least once. First from members of their own family, then from the general public. “Think you’re pretty special, don’t you?”...
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On the Failure of Language Around Women’s Chronic Mental Illness
For August, Reading Women‘s Kendra Winchester and Sachi Argabright are discussing books about chronic illness and mental health. This week Kendra and Sachi talk about two books, Ask Me About My Uterus:...
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Announcing the Shortlist for Reading Women’s Nonfiction Award
In this episode Reading Women will be talking about honorable mentions for the Reading Women Award. The co-hosts are Kendra Winchester and Autumn Privett. From the episode: Kendra Winchester: So...
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The Gay Activists Who Fought the American Psychiatric Establishment
Death of a Diagnosis: Homosexuality As a Mental Illness (1952-1973) Until 1973, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. This diagnosis helped justify...
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The Reporter Who Went Undercover at an Asylum
When the US government started tracking the incidence of mental illness, it broke it down into two broad categories of “idiocy” and “insanity.” By 1880, the census had expanded to include seven...
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How To Write a Novel When Everyone You Love Might Be Losing It
Susan Sontag wrote, “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” For a while the people in my life kept journeying to that second kingdom,...
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The Abnormalizing of the World: A Conversation On Mental Illness
Two celebrated memoirists of mental illness—Marin Sardy, author of The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia, and Sarah C. Townsend, author of Setting the Wire: A Memoir of Postpartum...
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The Unlikely Optimism of Viktor Frankl
In Vienna the war ended on April 13th, 1945. Two weeks later, the day of liberation came for the concentration camp inmate Viktor Frankl. But it would still take until August before he could return to...
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Betsy Bonner Tracks the Ghost of Her Sister’s Life
After reading an advance review copy of Betsy Bonner’s debut memoir, The Book of Atlantis Black, in a single-sitting, I loaned it to my mom who also read it in a single-sitting and said, “That was one...
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How Capitalism Created the Stigma Around Mental Illness
The coronavirus pandemic is dramatically disrupting not only our daily lives but society itself. This show features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the deeper...
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The Imposition of Meaning: Lessons From J.M. Coetzee About the Humanity of...
In J.M. Coetzee’s novel Life & Times of Michael K, an unnamed military medical officer broods over his patient, the eponymous Michael K: You are like a stick insect, Michaels [sic], whose sole...
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On the Friendship and Rivalry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton
In 1950s America, women were not supposed to be ambitious. When Sylvia Plath graduated from Smith College in 1955, her commencement speaker, Adlai Stevenson, praised the female graduates and pronounced...
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“I Wanted to Be on Fire.” On the Connection Between Art and Self-Destruction
“The best thing that can happen to you, as an actor,” my acting teacher said, “is to come offstage not knowing what just happened.” And around the room the twenty-odd drama students all nodded, and...
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