How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity

Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond

April 22, 2022

This melodic volume explores relationships between the surreal, impossible conditions (and conditions of impossibility) experienced by Black people and our radical, imaginative “mad Black creativity.” Showing us “lessons [we can] learn from those who make homeland in wasteland” as blueprints for freedom dreaming, Bruce picks apart the self-obscuring cultural and political forces that shape understandings of madness to disempower, disenfranchise, and control Black life and Being. This work undermines violent and trenchant institutional beliefs about normalcy and wellness. It is ratchet. It is unruly. It is gorgeous.

About the author

Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond

Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond is a leader in the worlds of youth development, education, thriving and well- being, and social justice research, with decades of work across communities, nonprofits, universities, K–12 schools, think tanks, and foundations. Dr. Darling-Hammond’s mission is to increase possibilities for thriving among those who experience complex marginalization. Her particular focus at the intersections of age × sexual orientation × gender × race × ability is grounded in the knowledge that design driven by those furthest from power improves all of our lives. Through her scholarship, Dr. Darling-Hammond has developed an intersectional Bridge to Thriving Framework© (BtTF©), which she uses with educators, students, scholars, activists, youth, and others to advance the shared project of building universal thriving.

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