Headcase: LGBTQ Writers and Artists on Mental Health and Wellness

Headcase: LGBTQ Writers and Artists on Mental Health and Wellness

Editors: Stephanie Schroeder and Teresa Theophano

I know little about the subject of mental health and would have been unlikely to be aware of this remarkable book if I hadn’t already been familiar with the ground-breaking work of one of the co-editors, Stephanie Schroeder, who produced this anthology with co-editor Teresa Theophano for Oxford University Press.

It is a rare collection in which each piece meets, in its own unique way, an extraordinarily high standard. The first sentence of the Foreword by Kai Cheng Thom draws the reader straight into real life: “I am several months behind deadline on writing this foreword: first, there were the implications of a mental health crisis of my own, then...”

Each contributor has an intimacy with the issues of mental health that has turned them into self-aware experts on their own conditions. And each has something illuminating to say about what the co-editors call “the evolution of queer identity as it interfaces with mental health.” Because the complications of being queer and needing help are so “downright crazymaking,” they say, they have reclaimed the word Headcase – a term as strong as the writing and the fight for health we go on to read about.

Through personal essays, professional approaches, graphic illustrations, photos, and poetry, we gain an insight into their worlds, not the least the inadequacies of the healthcare system and the often extended but life-saving search for the right medicines. Stephanie Schroeder discusses these both in her essay “Crowdsourcing my Antipsychotic” – a tale that gallops along like a fast-paced thriller, as she fights past a nauseating array of obstacles in her attempt to find and to fund the drug that can save her, despite the indifference of Big Pharma. Such difficulties in getting what is necessary turn up in many of the book’s pieces. J. R. Sullivan Voss’s emotional graphic story “Sisyphus (Or: Rocks Fall and Everyone Dies)” takes us into mental hospitals where torturous over-medication is the rule.

This is not a collection of dense academics nor is it dripping with jargon. It is a showcase of talented, gripping work. Eliza Gauger’s six complex “Problem Glyphs” are personalized illustrations called sigils that play the role, she says, of “a sort of occult advice column.” Some pieces are written by lovers, friends, and relatives of those struggling to gain their mental health. In “Erasure,” Gabriella M. Belfiglio briefly but potently narrates the experience of visiting her precious sister in what sounds like a high security mental hospital. She tells us: “Cell by cell, I’ve been watching her die for more than two-thirds of my life.” Juan Antonio Trujillo in a half a page describes his own mental acrobatics as he talks with delicacy to a fragile friend, in “Border / Lines.”

For many of the contributors, gaining control of their mental health leads to valuable achievements. I was transfixed by an amazing story of intertwined feminist and lesbian self-discovery by a mother and daughter in “Not Our Fault” by Chana Wilson. Co-editor Teresa Theophano speaks with full candor in a section called Stories of Survival. She tells us in “The Family Legacy Ends Here” that “surviving trauma has freed me.” Later she writes, “Emerging from those years of darkness has enabled me to participate more fully and with much more confidence in the organizing and community-building work that is my passion – especially now…”

Against my initial expectations, Headcase is an energizing read, full of pain and wit and joy. I have kept it by my bed and dipped in every evening, to learn, to be awed, and to be grateful. I have asked my local public library to order it and I suggest you do the same. I have one warning however – and it is a problem I see in many books put out by University presses. To save on the expense (i.e. number of pages), the font is miniscule and demanded my strongest reading glasses. The rewards, though, are humongous.

Comments

[Tracy Moore]

Katz, this is a compelling, lively and brilliantly written review. Thank you! I’m hoping Headcase is available as an ebook to address the font problem. Also will be buying your book.
Always,
Tracy

[Sue Katz]

Tracy, thanks for the kind words and I just checked with the editors: yes, there's a kindle version!