The Mad Liberation Audiobook Club is a virtual space centering accessibility while exploring Mad praxis, thought, and embodied/written wisdom.

What?

The Mad Liberation (Audio)book Club is a weekly book group focused on studying, discussing, critiquing, and relating to texts written on Madness.

Why?

I started the book group in Spring of 2024 because I was struggling to engage with texts in traditional formats and in traditional book clubs. It was hard for me to consume written/visual text, and hard for me to find time to engage with a text on my own time… but I still wanted to find an accessible way to read, and do so in community with others.

How does it work?

We meet every week on Mondays at 6:30-8:00 pm ET. The time is structured as follows…

• 6:30-7:00 PM ET

  We read a text, or portion of a text together and out loud. I provide a visual copy of the text (in PDF format) and use volunteers to read the text aloud.

• 7:00-8:00 PM ET

  We discuss what we just read. Typically we start out with a informal shared/collaborative summary to make sure we’re all on the same page with what the text was saying – especially for the denser and jargon-filled texts. Then we have an informal and unstructured discussion:

  • Parts of the text we agree with, parts of the text we disagree with
  • Critiques of the text: arguments, framing, missing perspectives
  • Personal relations to the text, personal shares
  • Connections to other movements outside of Madness
  • Questions that the text sparked

How does the space work to center accessibility?

While the space centers accessibility, I recognize that access needs are diverse, and sometimes even conflicting! In general, I encourage you to voice your needs if possible so that we can try to meet them as a group of other Mad, Disabled/chronically ill, neurodivergent folks. The following practices are already in place:

• Financial accessibility: I personally purchase all of the texts myself and scan the portion of the text we are reading. This is provided to all members as a PDF. This means that there is no need for members to purchase texts themselves!
• Texts are provided in a scanned PDF of book pages. We read the text aloud as a group. This means you can either choose to listen or visually consume the text – or some combination of both!
• Before diving into discussion, we try to collectively summarize the text – just in case you got lost in the jargon, got distracted, or joined a few minutes late.
• Typically the texts we read are stand-alone – meaning you don’t have to have been to the book club last week, or come consistently. It’s a drop-in space and you can come and go as you please.
• The book club is hosted on Zoom with automated captioning feature enabled. Unfortunately I don’t have the funds for live captioning or interpretation.
• There is never a requirement to participate in a specific way. You are welcome to join just to listen in, participate in the chat, or participate out loud. You won’t be called on or expected to speak.

Who is this space for?

This space is meant to center Mad, neurodivergent, Disabled/chronically ill, and psychiatric survivors. We welcome anyone who broadly fits this description. While this is a space for collective learning (including people who are new to Mad Liberation and psychiatric survivorship movements), we just ask that you leave sanism and other forms of oppression at the door to keep this space as safe as possible. We ask that everyone commit to being aware of identities they hold in the space and how they impact power dynamics – including and especially the title of “clinician”.

What texts do you read/have you read?

We’ve read a lot of texts in the past year! You can check out our collective spreadsheet of Mad Liberation media below. Feel free to contribute to the spreadsheet yourself if you’ve got some fun additions!

In general, we consume “texts” of many forms – we’ve listened to podcast episodes, read articles and self-published essays, and book chapters.

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Would you like to join?

Fill out the form below! I will manually add you to the email list. You’ll receive a weekly email (on Mondays) letting you know what text we’re reading and providing the Zoom link!