English Description of category goes here. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque vitae lorem condimentum, egestas metus at, tempus dui. Nullam laoreet accumsan nunc ac ornare. Donec metus enim, luctus vitae nibh at, vulputate dapibus quam. Morbi vehicula imperdiet eleifend. Aenean a condimentum nisi.
Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement is a seminal volume on Canada’s shelf of mad publications. Editor Irit Shimrat had the perfect resume for creating this important collection. She had edited the Toronto-based psychiatric-survivor newspaper Phoenix Rising, coordinated the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors’ Alliance, trained in book editing and design, and had spent time in several psychiatric facilities in the late 1970s.
Kiss Me You Mad Fool embodies the power of collective creative process.
A members Writing Group began at Toronto’s PARC (Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre) in 1988. For thirty-two years, PARC writers have gathered around a table to respond to a prompt, and write for twenty minutes.
Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum was self-published in 1885 by Mary Huestis Pengilly, a former patient in New Brunswick’s Provincial Lunatic Asylum. Although Pengilly was likely a paying patient, she still criticized the institution for poor food and harsh treatment. The volume opens with the poignant words, “They will not let me go home.”
The 1988 publication of Shrink Resistant was a milestone in English Canadian survivor culture, the first collective representation of the experiences of women and men who had been patients in psychiatric institutions. Produced by the Vancouver alternative publisher, New Star Press, Shrink Resistant was deeply and deliberately political.
Part memoir/ part art catalogue/ part essay, Still Sane was inspired by the searing 1984 sculpture exhibit of the same name that told the story of Gilhooly’s psychiatric incarceration for being a lesbian.
I’m Not Mad I’m Angry, the popular name for this historic publication, is an early feminist critique of the practice of psychiatry and how it contributed to the oppression of women. The first title put out by the newly formed feminist Press Gang Publishers of Vancouver, the book grew out of a 1973 University of British Columbia lecture series “Madness in Society” where Dorothy Smith (a sociologist) and Meredith Kimball (a psychologist) presented a strong political analysis of the negative encounters women had with psychiatry.
