Madness

   We usually go through life trying to figure out what goes inside of people's minds. "Madness: A Brief History" takes it one step further as Roy Porter goes through the history of the mentally insane, showing the reader's a glimpse into their minds. Porter however speaks of how the insane were viewed and treated beginning from the very ancient times to the developments of the twentieth century.
   One of the more interesting concepts in his book however, was that we still question, even after all of our modern medicine what madness truly is. He writes, " The figure of Folly may have also taken her bow, but the original riddle remains: is the world mad, is civilization itself psychopathogenic?...The issue is still alive." (Page 88). After all, there's melancholy poets who are considered mad and that is why their poetry is so alive. Then of course most every genius is pegged as insane, so really this book poses a question, are we all insane and do only a fraction of us have a grasp on reality, truth and greatness?

         I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes to question society and of course for those who are curious as to the history of things, because this book provides only the most pertinent and interesting things about the history of madness. I would also use this book in a classroom as an example of how ideas change over time, and how some treatments of the insane in the past were considered normal then and horrible/ridiculous in today's time; for ideas are ever changing.

- Timea Kernacova

A quick little blurb on "a mercy":

       Toni Morrison¹s latest novel  a mercy is a raw, powerful, and terrifying book. In it, Morrison unleashes an agoraphobic vision of colonial America, a space of constant negotiation (spatially, politically, and pragmatically) and hostility, in which life is brutish and short. The text takes as it starting point the twin horrors that underlie the foundation of the nation: the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of the Native Americans. It does not stop there, though, as Morrison is at pains to also show the tenuous lives of a host of characters who are marginal: those who suffered
under indentured servitude; gay men; orphans; prostitutes; foundlings; widows. In creating the scope of her novel this way, Morrison pens a rich and unspoken history of America, all while maintaining a sense of the very personal and private tragedies that inform the lives of her characters. The lawless and crassly commercial world of colonial America is a space in which individuals are constantly confined to their worth as commodities, but more than this, the text is a subtle and sensuous exploration of the violence of capitalism.
                                                                         
   The scope of the text is ambitious enough and this alone makes it worth reading. But when we add to this Morrison¹s unparalleled skill, we have a novel the reverberates and echoes with a fierce and haunting language. This is word made flesh made poetry made prose. This is a book that leaps off the page and gently buries itself in the throat and the heart. It is a text of extraordinary grace, fear, and sacrifice.
~By: Dr. Lorna L. Perez~