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A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia

by Sandra Allen
A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia

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ISBN13: 9781501134036
ISBN10: 1501134035
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Dazzlingly, daringly written, marrying the thoughtful originality of Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts with the revelatory power of Neurotribes and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, this propulsive, stunning book illuminates the experience of living with schizophrenia like never before.

Sandra Allen did not know her uncle Bob very well. As a child, she had been told he was “crazy,” that he had spent time in mental hospitals while growing up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. But Bob had lived a hermetic life in a remote part of California for longer than she had been alive, and what little she knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009 Bob mailed her his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences over sixty, single-spaced pages, the often incomprehensible manuscript proclaimed to be a “true story” about being “labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic,” and arrived with a plea to help him get his story out to the world.

Review

“To pay great attention and devote steady care to the perspective of another is, in itself, almost miraculous--especially when the Other has been cast as mad and dangerous. Sandra Allen has brought forward her uncle's life, rendering in exquisite detail what his experiences as a stigmatized, struggling man allowed him to see. This is a truly original piece of work. I urge you to read it.” Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family

Review

"This book is an act of radical empathy through which the author--and, vicariously, the reader--enters intimately into a life that would otherwise be unintelligible." Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

About the Author

Sandra Allen received an MFA from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. A former BuzzFeed features editor, she also co-founded the online literary magazine Wag's Revue. She lives in upstate New York. A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia is her first book.

Sandra Allen on PowellsBooks.Blog

IMG: Sandra Allen The book is based on something my uncle Bob mailed to me back in 2009: the story of his life, typewritten in all capital letters on 60 pages. On a cover page, he wrote that it was a “true story” about being “labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic.” At 16, as a teenager in Berkeley in the early 1970s, Bob had been driven to a mental hospital, locked in a cell, and injected with Thorazine, events that changed his life irrevocably...

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Average customer rating 4.5 (2 comments)

`
writermala , June 17, 2018 (view all comments by writermala)
it was the misspelling of the word ' miraculous' that led me to this book and I found it really emotional. Sandra Allen writes of her uncle Bob's struggle with schizophrenia and the account is heart rending. the story is heartbreaking as it sketches the portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life and his mind. The story for the most part will be unimaginable to most people and needs to be read by one and all. I for one would recommend it.

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spring22 , May 01, 2018 (view all comments by spring22)
After hearing Sandra Allen speak at a panel discussion on Memoir at the Los Angeles Festival of Books, I read her book. It is a riveting marriage of two voices, her own and her Uncle Bob's, who was schizophrenic. Uncle Bob mailed her his story, typed in ALL CAPS and with the sort of grammar and spelling that accounts for the title, and trusted her to share it with the world. Uncle Bob did not live to see the publication of this wondrous book, but his spirit is surely soaring to see the loving job that Ms. Allen has done in remaining faithful to his story, but rounding it out with both the stories of other family members who lived with a "crazy" relative and a deep investigation into the state of mental health care (or the lack thereof) in America, including the misconceptions about schizophrenia. The writer uses two different fonts to distinguish her words from those of Uncle Bob, which you might think would be distracting, but a way turns the fonts themselves into compelling characters. While not exactly memoir, this book is a moving and memorable addition to the canon of creative nonfiction.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781501134036
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
01/23/2018
Publisher:
SIMON & SCHUSTER TRADE
Pages:
288
Author:
Sandra Allen

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$10.95
List Price:$26.00
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