When: Thursday, March 29, 7:00pm
Where: The Odyssey Bookshop

In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise, Allen translates their uncle's autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Lacing Bob's narrative with chapters providing greater contextualization, Allen 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 health care 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.
Sandra Allen is a writer. Their debut book, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia was published by Scribner on January 23, 2018. It's about their Uncle Bob, who was involuntarily hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was a teenager in the early 1970s. It's based in large part upon his autobiography, which he typed on his typewriter and mailed them several years ago.
Allen's essays and features have been published by or are forthcoming in BuzzFeed News, Pop-Up Magazine, Pacific Standard, and them. Their reporting and research in recent years has focused on schizophrenia and mental illness/health more generally, including the past, present, and future of mental health care. They've previously written about such things as climate change and wine, fake hate crimes and mock trial. They've profiled Ina Garten, Tig Notaro and Sandy Allen, the late tallest woman on earth, with whom they happen to share a name. Their pieces have been named Notable Selections by Best American Essays and Best American Science and Nature Writing. In 2017, they were the recipient of a UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship and were a fellow at the MacDowell Colony.

Charting the tumultuous cycle of the generations--as girls become mothers, boys become criminals and hope struggles against deprivation--LeBlanc slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and true story.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's first book, Random Family, was a New York Times Bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the winner of The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Ridenhour Book Prize. LeBlanc's work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire, Elle, Spin, The Source, The Village Voice, and other magazines. LeBlanc lives in Manhattan.
Event date:
Thursday, March 29, 2018 - 7:00pm
Event address:
Odyssey Bookshop
9 College st.
South Hadley, MA 01075
$26.00
ISBN: 9781501134036
Availability: Not in Stock - Hard to Find
Published: Scribner - January 23rd, 2018
$19.00
ISBN: 9780743254434
Availability: Not in Stock
Published: Scribner - February 10th, 2004