The Love of This Heart Once Chosen
Life has a funny way of bringing up things long buried or lost at sea. Material or memory, there are feelings, moments, loves, and losses that make the best and worst of us. Rarely named, they are often our most unspoken truths.
Continue reading “Articulate Heart”
Art to the Senses
Huà ěr meets her at the corner store.
She hadn’t intended it, of course. She’d wished only to pick up dinner after work, absentmindedly enjoying the crinkle of saturated, plastic packaging under her fingers. But she is accustomed to the little pains of the world, to catching and picking out injustices; she cannot help but catch the rise of harsh, male voices crowding around the corner of the store, a writhing mass of dissonance that leaves the taste of rubber on her furu-soft tongue.
She does not understand the words, and yet the wiry inflections, as flimsy and prickly as the cheap shelves the goods stand upon, make the message clear. Huà ěr would turn tail and run if a man spoke to her with such mocking, such jeering contempt.
Continue reading “Angelina Tang”
This workshop pilot invites people who have experienced involuntary institutionalization or had carceral experiences within psychiatry and the mental health system to participate in a series of four memoir-writing workshops on the subject of psychiatric incarceration. Historically, the bodies and voices of those who have experienced institutionalization have been restrained, contained, and silenced. During the workshop series, we will aim to make our voices heard through the proverbial and literal walls of the institution by shaping memoirs about psychiatric incarceration that aim to dismantle social stigma, pathologization, and criminalization by writing agenda-driven narratives that evoke understanding and empathy, in an effort to reclaim autonomy over our bodies and selves and amplify our voices.
Continue reading “Shouting Through the Walls: Memoirs of Psychiatric Incarceration”
Boxing Fight
The opposing fighter was tall and long, at least for a 141 lb. I thought cutting the 15 pounds this past week would give me an advantage making me bigger than my opponent, but this guy was much bigger than I had anticipated. I took a deep breath in. My head felt light. Cutting that weight had taken its toll but there was no turning back. My opponent was in front of me, and I had no choice but to vanquish them.
Continue reading “Patricia Del Rosario”
In Walked Mania by Another Name… (and It wasn’t Bud)
I always told myself, “If I could just finish college.” Then, “If I could just move.” And then finally, “If I could just find a job in my major and work.” The voices would stop then. But they didn’t. I finally had to admit to myself this was a for-real lifelong struggle. I wasn’t ready to handle that, and death was my contingency plan.
Continue reading “Jacquese Armstrong”
Child Witch
Summer of 1975. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released. Elton John’s Philadelphia Freedom manned the top of the Billboard Charts. Michigander Gerald Ford was president, succeeding Watergate- disgraced Richard Nixon. My favorite jeans were vertically striped in white, yellow, green and brown.
It wasn’t Levittown, but it was similar. Livonia was a once new-ring suburb of Detroit, where I was born. Our little burg was called Devonaire Woods and carpeted with post WWII brick ranch homes. All were designed and built alike: three bedrooms, one bath, living room, kitchen and basement. If kids visited someone else’s house, you didn’t need to ask where the bathroom was.
Continue reading “Gina Fournier”
This month, the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo hosted a book reception for “Madwomen in Social Justice Movements, Literatures, and Art” (Vernon Press), co-edited by Jessica Lowell Mason (MITA’s co-founder) and Nicole Crevar. The reception was held held at UB in Clemens Hall, North Campus, on March 15, 2023.
Continue reading “A Book Reception for Madwomen in Social Justice Movements, Literatures, and Art”
A Queer Feminist Ethics of Eros
A Chapbook of Feminist Poems
The following works inspired this chapbook of poems: Transforming Carceral Logics: 10 reasons to Dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex Through Queer/Trans Analysis and Action by S. Lamble, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action by Audre Lorde, Are the Lips a Grave? by Lynne Huffer, Educating a Women: A Feminist Agenda by bell hooks, and Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (“Towards a New Consciousness“) by Gloria Anzaldúa.
Continue reading “Angelina Pacholczak”
Like many of the witnesses who provided verbal testimony during today’s public hearing on mental health, I would like to thank Attorney General James for holding this hearing and for providing a venue for everyone to have a voice in addressing problems within our mental healthcare system: in my five years of involvement with mental health advocacy in western New York, I have never been made aware of any kind of public hearing of this nature; it is a first in my experience, and I hope it sets a precedent for similar venues for open communication between the mental healthcare system and the community members affected by it. I’d like to introduce myself.
Continue reading “Attorney General Letitia James’ Public Hearing on Mental Health in Buffalo, NY: Witness Testimony Against ECMC’s Psychiatric Program”
A Mad Feminist Dialogue for a Mad Archive: “Mad Feminist Activism in the Global Feminist Movement: A Dialogue on and of Dissent”
This event was part of the 7th Biennial Seneca Falls Dialogues, in 2020, hosted by the Women’s Institute for Leadership and Learning. The dialogue brought together mad activists and scholars to discuss old and new directions in Mad feminist activism and to consider mad activism’s role in a larger feminist agenda. It will also touched on the rights and positionality of women, Black and Indigenous People of Color, and LGBTQ+ folx living with psychiatric labels or who have had psychiatric experiences, and those fighting for their rights from unique locations within larger social justice efforts. The dialogue considered non-normative activism and elicited discourse on what mad feminist activism has been and is becoming, considering the ways that mad feminist activism has dealt with and deals with identity, erased histories, and contested activist and advocacy tendencies and trajectories. By exchanging ideas and sharing experiences on mad feminist activism, our hope was that our dialogue would serve as a moment of mad grassroots organizing.
Continue reading “Mad Feminist Activism in the Global Feminist Movement”
Madwomen in the Attic 