Published 9/30 from Routledge Press: MAD STUDIES READER
Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health
The last few years have brought increased writings from activists, artists, scholars, and concerned clinicians that cast a critical and constructive eye on psychiatry, mental health care, and the cultural relations of mental difference. With particular focus on accounts of lived experience and readings that cover issues of epistemic and social injustice in mental health discourse, the Mad Studies Reader brings together voices that advance anti-sanist approaches to scholarship, practice, art, and activism in this realm.
This collection will be of interest to mental health clinicians; students and scholars of the arts, humanities and social sciences; and anyone who has been affected by mental difference, directly or indirectly, who is curious to explore new perspectives.
Issa has contributed a short, modern ghost story about asylums, Bob Dylan, and what Woody Guthrie left behind in Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.
Featured in the opening chapter Innovative Artists:
Woody Guthrie’s Brain
by Issa Ibrahim
“Ibrahim uses creative nonfiction to give us a surprising window into one of the most notorious aspects of our social responses to mental difference- the creation of asylums to confine those deemed “too other” to function in the normate world.”
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Issues Books
Issa Ibrahim's memoir ‘The Hospital Always Wins’, first published by Chicago Review Press in 2016, is now produced in Limited Edition paperback by the author under the publication arm ISSUES BOOKS. Although still available as an e-book and in audio book format the book is out of print.
Issa recently acquired the reversion of the rights to the printed book and this is the only reliable source to acquire a copy in print.
He has since gone on to publish graphic novels and several career retrospective art books.
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The Hospital Always Wins: A Memoir
Issa Ibrahim is the author of ‘The Hospital Always Wins: A Memoir’ published on 6/2016 by Chicago Review Press. The book has the notable distinction of being the first work published by an African American written from behind the walls of a mental institution.
Issa Ibrahim’s memoir details in searing prose his development of severe mental illness leading to a horrific family tragedy, his acquittal by reason of insanity, and his subsequent commission to a mental hospital for nearly twenty years.
Raised in an idyllic creative environment, mom and dad cultivating his talent, Issa watches his family’s descent into chaos in the drug-crazed late 1980s. Following his father’s death, Issa, grief-stricken and vulnerable, travels down a road that leads to psychosis—and to one of the most nightmarish scenarios conceivable.
Issa receives the insanity plea and is committed to an insane asylum with no release date. But that is only the beginning of his odyssey. Institutional and sexual sins cause further punishments, culminating in a heated legal battle for freedom.
Written with great verve and immediacy, The Hospital Always Wins paints a detailed picture of a broken mental health system but also reveals the power of art, when nurtured in a benign environment, to provide a resource for recovery. Ultimately this is a story about survival and atonement through creativity and courage against almost insurmountable odds.
Reviews
“Issa Ibrahim’s memoir is a report from the inside, a rare story of a patient making his way out of the labyrinth of mental illness. Written with immediacy and honesty, it’s a captivating tale of survival against great odds, and a true original.” —John Turturro, actor, director, and writer
“I picked up The Hospital Always Wins and couldn’t put it down. Issa Ibrahim writes with remarkable clarity and an artist’s skill for evoking place and time and the inner landscape of his own mind.” —Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic
“A beautifully written masterpiece of shocking truths, powerful drama, and gripping storytelling. It pulled me down the rabbit hole and spit me out under a deadly cold light, deftly transformed to an unexpected warmth by the remarkable compassion of the author. I couldn’t put it down until the truly shocking finish.” —Xavier Amador, author of I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help!
“Artist Ibrahim’s desperate memoir feels as though it was carved from his heart.” —Booklist
"Searing" and "poignant." —O, the Oprah Magazine
“Insightful, troubling, touching, poetic, and at times humorous, this book will please readers of offbeat biographies.” —Library Journal
Video Excerpts
Spend some time with Issa's acclaimed memoir, art, and music in digestible video segments, interviews and more. The stories behind the art of Issa Ibrahim in his own words, excerpted from the audio book of his memoir The Hospital Always Wins, as read by Kevin R. Free.