Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"Compelling...A bracing work of art and a loving tribute" ( Los Angeles Times ), this propulsive, stunning book illuminates the experience of living with schizophrenia like never before.
Sandra Allen did not know their uncle Bob very well. As a child, Sandy had been told Bob 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 Sandy had been alive, and what little Sandy knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009 Bob mailed Sandy his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences more than 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.
"Searing" ( O, The Oprah Magazine ), "enthralling" ( Star-Tribune , Minneapolis), and "a marvel" ( Esquire ), A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise shows how Sandy translated Bob's autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Sandy also shares background information about their family, the culturally explosive time and place of their uncle's formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. The result is a heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life as well as his mind, and an utterly unique lens into an experience that, to most people, remains unimaginable.
"Thrilling...Gorgeous...a watershed in empathetic adaptation of 'outsider' autobiography" ( The New Republic ), A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise is a dazzlingly, daringly written book that's poised to change conversations about schizophrenia and mental illness overall.
Genesis -- IM ROBERT -- The way society was -- THE CAGED WINDOW -- A blank -- ::WHEEEEE::: -- You can call it anything -- A LIVING ZOMBIE -- A real shocker -- FAMOUSE -- The right treatment -- GOD HAD ANSWERED -- Three days -- LOUISIANA -- Any other way -- THE FANNZE -- What a shame -- THE SERVICE -- The story of Annadonia -- TABBACO ROAD -- The fifth portrait -- PARADISE.
"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. In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise, Allen translates her uncle's autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them..."-- Provided by publisher.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
In this compelling debut, former BuzzFeed editor Allen recounts the life of her Uncle Bob, whom she barely knew until he asked her to share his story. Since his childhood in 1960s Berkeley, CA, Bob meticulously recorded his transient life after his parent's divorce: a diagnosis of schizophrenia at 16, unexpected visits to hospitals and halfway houses, idolizing Jimi Hendrix, and playing guitar in short-lived bands in the Bay Area. Allen is a skillful writer, letting Bob's vivid memories (and occasionally offensive statements) speak for themselves. Especially candid are tales of family trips to Minnesota, which Bob refers to as a "mirraculas paradise," and his efforts to reclaim his faith. Remembrances from family and friends are interspersed with these recollections, offering differing viewpoints. Brief interviews with psychiatrists and geneticists lead Allen to realize that there is no simple definition of schizophrenia nor a consensus on proper treatment. VERDICT A page-turning biography and family history along the lines of Bryan Mealer's The Kings of Big Spring. Don't be put off by the subject-although Allen includes bits of medical history, this is a deeply personal story about an enigmatic person living the only way he knows how: by trial and error. In that, many can relate.-Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
In this insightful memoir, Allen, a former BuzzFeed features editor, tracks a relative's descent into mental illness. In 2009, Allen, who had moved from California to Iowa City to attend the University of Iowa's creative-nonfiction writing program, received a phone call from her uncle Bob, with whom she had long been out of touch. He explained that he had written a book about his life and that he wanted her to read it. Allen's extended family had spent time together during vacations at a Minnesota lake when Allen was a child, but over time Allen saw her uncle Bob less frequently, and members of her family referred to him as "crazy." When the manuscript arrived, Allen didn't want to deal with it: "It was hideous to look at, even from a distance. Its pages literally reeked." The manuscript contained incomprehensible ramblings, racial and sexual slurs, and family stories better left untold. In time, she felt compelled to bring his story to the public. She began to edit his writing, and with each rewrite Allen became more engaged with her uncle's manuscript and his life. Allen builds her uncle's story on a solid scaffolding of chapters of her family history that alternate with rewritten passages of Bob's memoir that detail his growing up in Northern California in the 1960s and the state of mental-health care in America at that time as he underwent treatment for schizophrenia. Allen offers readers an incredible glimpse into the life of a person battling with schizophrenia. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
What do you do when you learn that a family member, whom you thought of as different but not that different, has a serious mental disorder? That is the dilemma Allen confronts in her compulsively readable book. While growing up in Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s, she was told that Bob was just her crazy uncle. Fast-forward to 2009, when he mailed Allen his autobiography more than 60 single-spaced pages on which he described, as best he could, his psychotic, paranoid schizophrenic mind. He asked that Allen help get his story out to the world, and as she does, she navigates not only her family history but also the state of mental healthcare in twenty-first-century America. She had given little thought to the word schizophrenia before receiving her uncle's manuscript. What ideas I had were fuzzy and ugly; they'd come maybe from movies, or from the news, she writes. Now, as she tells Bob's story, she also explores the history of schizophrenia, including the changing attitudes of mental health professionals. A fascinating and important work.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2018 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
A schizophrenic's autobiographical manuscript serves as a creative-nonfiction project for his niece.As a graduate student in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa, former BuzzFeed editor Allen received a large envelope from the man she had affectionately known as "my crazy uncle Bob." Her mother's brother hadn't been in much contact with the rest of the family outside of phone calls and an occasional cassette of the music he made and that obsessed him. The author set it aside because it disturbed her. However, she eventually not only read it, but began devoting much of her scholastic energy to it, sharing it with fellow students and writing an essay about it. Once she had brought herself to reading it, "what surprised me was how much I liked ithis word choices and style." Allen alternates between her edit of the manuscript she received, preserving the style and substance but cleaning it up some (it had been in all capital letters with irregular punctuation), and her own interpretation of what happened to her uncle: her attempts to corroborate what he had written with his parents and friends and her views on his treatment and psychiatry in general. The result is a patchwork, with the reader not sure what to believe and why it should be significant. Family members disagreed over Bob's diagnosis and his recollections, and Allen's own attempts to find perspective lack authority. "In my experience," she writes, "people who've been psychiatrically diagnosed feel a variety of ways about their diagnosis and about the field of psychiatry itself." She elaborates, "no two people I've interviewed or resources I've read about mental health care in America have felt the same way about what the right treatment should look like. But almost everyone who follows these issues agrees that the situation at present is quite grim." Bob may not have managed to fit inside society, but he found a measure of peace outside it.A glimpse of how schizophrenia looks and feels from the inside. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Sandy Allen is a writer, speaker, editor and teacher. Their essays and features stories have been published by BuzzFeed News , CNN Opinion , Bon Appétit's Healthyish, and Pop-Up Magazine . Sandy was previously BuzzFeed News 's deputy features editor. They also founded and ran the online-only literary quarterly Wag's Revue . Sandy's work focuses on constructs of normalcy, including psychiatric disability and gender. Sandy is non-binary trans. Originally from Muir Beach, CA, they live in the Catskills. A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise is their first book. For more, visit HelloSandyAllen.com.
TextPublisher: New York : Scribner, 2018Copyright date: ©2018Edition: First Scribner hardcover editionDescription: vii, 275 pages ; 24 cmContent type: 
Book