Early Reviewers M. V. Perry

From the chilly gray of her hometown on Chicago's North Shore to a palm-speckled, sun-drenched California campus, young Ellen "Boo" Harvey is caught in a depressive descent into mania and melancholy that no one around her has the language, energy, or courage to look squarely in the face. Unheard or dismissed by her family and friends, Boo is forced to grapple with the ferocity of her Madness and the intricacies of her mind alone -- careening from mental paralysis and near-invalidity to recovery and back again. Despite every privilege afforded to her as the well-heeled daughter of a blue blood family, Boo's trajectory seems terminally inescapable until she meets Jude, a suicidal advocate for the mentally ill in Chicago, who teaches her how to rail against the machines and structures that work around the clock to render an entire class of Americans politically invisible and permanently broken. An assiduous and provocative debut, MV Perry's A Revolution of the Mind is equal parts political manifesto, tortured self-portrait, and call to action that gazes unflinchingly at the causes and manifestations of contemporary American Madness.

Online Book Description:

“For too long, the voices of people living with mental illness have been ignored. This is a necessary book. It is a gripping narrative and a valuable tool for advocates, professionals—everyone—to broaden the understanding of mental disability.”

~Pia Justessen, author of From the Periphery: Real Life Stories of Disability

Boo Harvey is an outcast. After a six-year decline into severe mental illness and alienation, she is determined to build a political movement representing those who have been marginalized by their own mental illness. However, given her city’s nonexistent system for formal mental health treatment and a skewed social consciousness about mental illness, she quickly realizes that her goal may be challenging, if not impossible.

In her journey to spur a social movement, Boo finds a mentor in Jude Freedman, an eccentric ex-patient from the era of pre war, government-run asylums. Together, the two commit themselves to building a political movement that gives a voice to those affected by one of the most neglected issues in the U.S. - mental health treatment and awareness. As a social pariah who has experienced both extreme privilege and abjection, Boo lives in a social no-man’s-land, offering caustic if not profound observations about her new and old lives.

Perfect for fans of All My Puny Sorrows and The Collected Schizophrenias, A Revolution of the Mind will provide insight into how society views and handles mental illness and open your eyes to the ways in which psychological health is shaped by socioeconomic factors.

From the chilly gray of her hometown on Chicago's North Shore to a palm-speckled, sun-drenched California campus, young Ellen "Boo" Harvey is caught in a depressive descent into mania and melancholy that no one around her has the language, energy, or courage to look squarely in the face. Unheard or dismissed by her family and friends, Boo is forced to grapple with the ferocity of her Madness and the intricacies of her mind alone -- careening from mental paralysis and near-invalidity to recovery and back again. Despite every privilege afforded to her as the well-heeled daughter of a blue blood family, Boo's trajectory seems terminally inescapable until she meets Jude, a suicidal advocate for the mentally ill in Chicago, who teaches her how to rail against the machines and structures that work around the clock to render an entire class of Americans politically invisible and permanently broken. An assiduous and provocative debut, MV Perry's A Revolution of the Mind is equal parts political manifesto, tortured self-portrait, and call to action that gazes unflinchingly at the causes and manifestations of contemporary American Madness.

Online Book Description: 

“For too long, the voices of people living with mental illness have been ignored. This is a necessary book. It is a gripping narrative and a valuable tool for advocates, professionals—everyone—to broaden the understanding of mental disability.”

~Pia Justessen, author of From the Periphery: Real Life Stories of Disability

Boo Harvey is an outcast. After a six-year decline into severe mental illness and alienation, she is determined to build a political movement representing those who have been marginalized by their own mental illness. However, given her city’s nonexistent system for formal mental health treatment and a skewed social consciousness about mental illness, she quickly realizes that her goal may be challenging, if not impossible.

In her journey to spur a social movement, Boo finds a mentor in Jude Freedman, an eccentric ex-patient from the era of pre war, government-run asylums. Together, the two commit themselves to building a political movement that gives a voice to those affected by one of the most neglected issues in the U.S. - mental health treatment and awareness. As a social pariah who has experienced both extreme privilege and abjection, Boo lives in a social no-man’s-land, offering caustic if not profound observations about her new and old lives.

Perfect for fans of All My Puny Sorrows and The Collected Schizophrenias, A Revolution of the Mind will provide insight into how society views and handles mental illness and open your eyes to the ways in which psychological health is shaped by socioeconomic factors.