References and Reading Recommendations

References and Reading Recommendations

This enclosed glass case has a listing of mental health resources and phone numbers to call in case of a mental health emergency.

Below the numbers are several books used by the curator while researching this exhibit.  The books are:

THE COMPELLING STORY OF THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF THE MOTHER OF AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS ICON, MALCOLM X.

Louise Little was the mother of Malcolm Little, the man who would become the American civil rights icon Malcolm X.

Drawing on a wide range of previously unseen sources, The Life of Louise Norton Little tells of Louise’s early life in Grenada and journey to Canada and the United States. Louise was a proud and independent black woman. She and her children endured many injustices at the hands of the welfare system.

In later life, unfairly judged insane after the birth of her eighth child, she was incarcerated for over 25 years in Kalamazoo State Hospital, until her family eventually secured her release. Malcolm described his hospital visits to Louise as: “trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers. I looked at her. I listened to her 'talk'. But there was nothing I could do.”

Despite its tragedies, Louise’s story is ultimately one of courage and an abiding sense of civil rights and social justice. These are the values she passed to all of her children and their descendants.

25% every book bought contributes to a fund benefitting women of color and to further the legacy of Louise Norton Little. The funding will be administered by her youngest daughter Yvonne Little's daughters.

315 pages

Published August 30, 2020

Asylum for the Insane: A History of the Kalamazoo State Hospital

By William A. Decker, M.D.

To establish the context within which the Kalamazoo Hospital came to be built, Decker begins the story in Europe in the previous centuries with historical antecedents, theories about mental illness and the treatment of mental disorders. These formative, primitive ideas were gradually adopted in this country where very little understanding of mental disorders existed. When the Kalamazoo State Hospital was founded, then named the Michigan Asylum for the Insane, in 1854, there were no private practitioners of psychiatry even in the largest cities. Psychiatry grew out of the exchange of information between the medical staff of these new public institutions. Dr. Decker gives readers a comprehensive view of Michigan s first psychiatric facility including the architectural style and plans, building descriptions and history, Legislative Acts regarding the operation and governance, personnel including Medical Directors, historical perspective on the causes of insanity, their treatment and services, noteworthy events and a complete bibliography and appendix.

400 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2007

Ten Days in a Mad-House

By Nellie Bly

In 1887, 23-year-old reporter Nellie Bly had herself committed to a New York City asylum for 10 days to expose the horrific conditions for 19th-century century mental patients.

Nellie Bly (1864-1922) was the pen name of pioneer female journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She remains notable for two feats: a record-breaking trip around the world, in emulation of Jules Verne's character Phileas Fogg (Bly completed the trip in seventy-two days) and an exposé, in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. In addition to her writing, she was also an industrialist and charity worker. Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital in New York City in 1922 aged 57.

92 pages

First published in 1887

The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

By Darby Penney, Peter Stastny, Lisa Rinzler

The Lives They Left Behind is a deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness, and of the narrow margin which so often separates the sane from the mad.  It is a remarkable portrait, too, of the life of a psychiatric asylum--the sort of community in which, for better and for worse, hundreds of thousands of people lived out their lives.

More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

205 pages

First published January 1, 2008

Behind the Scenes, Or, Life in an Insane Asylum

By Lydia Adeline Jackson Button Smith

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878 edition. ... CHAPTER XIV. To the People of the State of Come, let us reason together. Let us look at this asylum question in its true light. Let us who pay our money for the support of this institution demand that it be conducted on the same principle the law makes provision for. Our insane are taken to the asylum retreat to be cared for and benefited, and not to be injured. Our state law (referring to the asylum law) says, first, " Care shall be taken that no person be injured." (It matters not how violent a patient may be, they can be managed without injury.) Let us see to it that this law be observed. Second, " That every patient shall be seen, and notice taken of their condition, as often as once or twice a day, as the case may demand." Third, "That no person be received as a patient unless first examined by two physicians, and pronounced a fit subject for the asylum." And furthermore, " that no person be detained there who is not really insane." And another consideration, "There should be no ignorant or unprincipled attendants employed." I know for a positive fact that these laws were not regarded nor kept by those who had charge of this institution, and that the said superintendent, Dr. E. H. Van Deusen, was not only guilty of gross neglect, but also of willful and premeditated wrongs. The first lessons were not learned at Kalamazoo, as the Tyler case and others will show. I think it very important that there should be a law providing a fund of relief or compensation where attendants are injured by violent patients. There has been no such provision made as yet. Let this subject be considered. One attendant was seriously injured while I was there by being bitten by a patient. She was so much injured that she had to go to a great expense...

274 pages, Paperback

First published in 1887