Tinfoil Hats: Stories by Mad People in an Insane World is a collection of stories by neurodivergent people who identify as being Mad, about what it's like to live Mad in a world that oppresses them for the ways they think, live, and act differently from those who consider themselves Normal.
intensely personal, sometimes funny, sometimes dark, these stories are always illuminating. some describe situations that are vibrantly shameful, horrifyingly scary, and just plain hard. they're also joyful, spiritual, and enlivening. these are narratives that describe in detail what it looks, feels, sounds, and smells like to be Made Mad. they outline what it's like for Mad people to interact with those in the psy-complex who stigmatize, psychiatrize, and traumatize those called crazy. it's unhinged writing, about whirleds unknown and unimagined by most. it's work that is immensely difficult to write, read, talk, or think about.
Tinfoil Hats was not conceived as - should not be read as - some kind of trauma porn, a way to get juiced on the misery and distress of others. nope. nuttin like dat. instead, it sees Madness as a kind of political and revolutionary knowledge. it troubles the ways in which Mad bodyminds are heard and understood by the psy-industrial complex and the dominating, epistemic violence it inflicts on us all.
the authors come from all over the world, and from all walks of life. Tinfoil Hats is edited by Mad poet, artist, and scholar Phil Smith, whose recent work Writhing Writing: Moving Towards a Mad Poetics (and published by Autonomous Press) won the 2020 American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Award.
this book is for you if you're a Mad person, or if you know someone who is. this book is for you if you're a social worker, psychologist, researcher, therapist, doctor, or nurse, and want to know what it's like to live Mad. this book is for you if you're curious about what saneism is, and what that form of oppression means in the lives of real people.
Tinfoil Hats is the beginning of a Mad (r)evolution. join us.
