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A liberating book for Mad, neurodiverse, and disabled QTBIPOC folks to create a more equitable and playful future in institutions and systems that were not made for them
As Mad, neurodiverse, and disabled QTBIPOC folks working in institutions, we are in need of healing. We are at the mercy of systems that bet on our exhaustion, extracted labor, and burnout. A Mad Mess defiantly and unapologetically refuses to wait for such institutions to change.
Based on her own experience as an educator, Kafai reveals how "mess" is at the heart of this book and her life. Mess is a Mad, queer, and decolonial tool that intervenes in oppressive structures in institutions. It also resists the narratives of perfectionism and people pleasing that are rooted in ableism and sanism and adapted into academia. Mess will help us remember to stay and transform institutions into what we need them to be.
Informed by the genre-bending works of Alice Wong and adrienne maree brown, A Mad Mess centers the imperfect, defiant, and tender Mad resistance strategies to our thriving that are always, above all, messy. Part love letter and part aspirational guide, A Mad Mess amplifies the Mad dreaming and mourning we need if we are to create a liberatory future that truly embraces and supports us.
"This unflinchingly honest, personal, and bold book challenges us to embrace mess, reject shame, and learn to be our full selves at work, in the classroom, and beyond. Grounded in the lived experiences and theorizing of Mad and disabled queer femmes of color, A Mad Mess is particularly a must-read for anyone surviving or healing from life in academia."
—Sami Schalk, author of Black Disability Politics
"Shayda Kafai writes to the rhythms of our heart—not its physical beat but the waves of terror and hope that claim it again and again, as we see ourselves in the Mad mess, afraid to be seen, yearning to be seen, finding new ways to see and be seen. I feel this book in my body: a warmth, a pulsating energy, vibration across my skin, a yawning hollow in my middle, a rush of hope that feels like freefalling. This book is a world: the Mad, disabled, queer, femme of color world Kafai is building and helping us figure out how to build. This is the only world I want to live in, the only world where all of us get to fully be alive."
—Mimi Khúc, author of dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss
"Full of generosity, gratitude, and glitter, A Mad Mess shows us how liberating and transformative making a mess can be. This book is welcoming and engaging, like a conversation among Mad crip kin."
—Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip
Shayda Kafai (she/her) is an associate professor in the Ethnic and Women's Studies Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She is the author of Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice Art Activism of Sins Invalid (Arsenal Pulp Press) and is the co-editor of Mad Scholars: Reclaiming and Reimagining the Neurodiverse Academy (Syracuse University Press). She lives in Montclair, California.