Committed - A Memoir of Finding Meaning in Madness

When Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s and grieving the loss of her mother, she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute. After nearly three years and countless experimental treatments, Suzanne left the ward on shaky legs. In the decades it took her to recover from the experience, Suzanne came to understand her suffering as part of something larger: a long tradition of women whose complicated and compromised stories of self-discovery are reduced to ''madwoman'' narratives. Transporting, honest, and unflinching, Suzanne recounts her story alongside her reading of writers from the ''madwoman canon'' - including Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sylvia Plath and radical feminist Shulamith Firestone . The result is a profoundly moving journey through madness, from breakdown to breakthrough, and a revelatory exploration of being a woman and being mad - and how interwoven those experiences can be.

About the author

Suzanne Scanlon

Summary

A raw and masterful memoir about becoming a woman and going mad - and doing both at once.

Product details

• Authors: Suzanne Scanlon
• Publisher: John Murray
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 25.04.2024
• EAN: 9781399804806
• ISBN: 978-1-399-80480-6
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 146 mm x 218 mm x 34 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women, Biography: general, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, Coping with mental health issues, Coping with illness & specific conditions, Gender studies: women and girls, HEALTH & FITNESS / Mental Health, Coping with / advice about mental health issues