A living library for survivors, clinicians, poets & friends.

Memoirs & lived experience

Mental health, madness, neurodiversity — experience at the centre.

• An Unquiet Mind — Kay Redfield Jamison

  A clinical scholar writing with the intimacy of lived experience about bipolar disorder; a cornerstone memoir.

• Anatomy of an Epidemic / Mad in America — Robert Whitaker

  Two linked works tracing psychiatric practice and its harms; essential for structural questions about medication, institutions and power.

• The Collected Schizophrenias — Esmé Weijun Wang

  Essays that render diagnosis, stigma and the fragility of medical narratives with lyric intelligence.

• The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath

  A literary classic about depression and a life under pressure — to feel less alone, not to diagnose.

• Freshwater — Akwaeke Emezi

  Fiction exploring multiplicity, spirit possession and identity, and the porous borders between trauma and myth.

• Being Seen — Elsa Sjunneson

  A powerful essay collection foregrounding disability, survival and narrative authority.

Borderline, bipolar & depression

Intimate and practical — what diagnosis feels like, and how people survive.

• The Buddha and the Borderline — Kiera Van Gelder

  A memoir that also offers practical DBT insights through story.

• Madness: A Bipolar Life — Marya Hornbacher

  Unflinching, lyrical, and corrective to shame.

• Darkness Visible · Reasons to Stay Alive · The Noonday Demon — Styron, Haig, Solomon

  Three different but compassionate paths into understanding depressive illness.

Neurodiversity & disability justice

Work that centres access, dignity and alternatives to pathologising frameworks.

• Unmasking Autism — Devon Price

  A humane, practical book about masking and being allowed to be oneself.

• Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

  A radical, poetic collection placing care and accessibility at the centre of liberation politics.

• Decolonizing Trauma Work — Renee Linklater

  Indigenous-grounded trauma work that reframes healing as community and ceremony.

• Loud Hands — Julia Bascom (ed.)

  Autistic voices speaking back: manifesto, essays, and reflection from inside the community.

Clinical, trauma & practice

For therapists & students — theory, technique and humane practice.

• Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends / Maps of Narrative Practice — White & Epston

  Ground zero for narrative-therapy practice and thinking with stories.

• Trauma and Recovery — Judith Herman

  The classic that maps individual trauma onto political harm.

• Emotion-Focused Therapy — Leslie Greenberg (selected texts)

  For clinicians who work with emotions and attachment.

• It Didn’t Start With You — Mark Wolynn

  On intergenerational patterns and how family narratives carry trauma.

Narrative, expressive & arts-based practice

• The Tree of Life Project (worksheets & handouts)

  A narrative-informed group tool for identity & strengths.

• Writing & expressive-therapy guides

  Collections and worksheets (Therapist Aid, PositivePsychology, CarePatron) for journalling, metaphor work and re-authoring.

Psychiatry, critique & systems

• Mad in America — Robert Whitaker

  A history of psychiatry’s failures and how systemic practice shapes patient outcomes.

• The Collected Schizophrenias — Esmé Weijun Wang

  Critique shaped by intimate experience.

Feminism, queer theory & culture

• The Argonauts — Maggie Nelson

  Hybrid memoir-essay on family, gender and intimacy.

• The Queer Art of Failure — Jack Halberstam

  Reframes failure as political tactic and creative strategy.

• Emergent Strategy — adrienne maree brown

  Organising, small experiments and movement wisdom.

• Yes Means Yes — Jaclyn Friedman & Jessica Valenti (eds.)

  On consent, power and culture.

Caste literature & political memory

• The Trauma of Caste — Thenmozhi Soundararajan

  A Dalit feminist meditation blending memoir, abolitionist politics and healing tools.

• Annihilation of Caste — B. R. Ambedkar

  The foundational political manifesto against caste hierarchy.

• Ants Among Elephants — Sujatha Gidla

  A family memoir that reads like history; fierce and intimate.

• Joothan — Omprakash Valmiki

  A classic Dalit memoir mapping everyday humiliation and resistance.

• We Also Made History — Urmila Pawar & Meenakshi Moon

  Oral histories of Dalit women in the Ambedkarite movement.

• Caste Matters — Suraj Yengde

  A modern, incisive analysis of caste in contemporary life.

• When I Hid My Caste — Baburao Bagul

  Landmark short fiction that loosened the ground for Dalit narrative voice.

Fiction & poetry that speak to mind & body

• Freshwater — Akwaeke Emezi

  For radical re-imaginings of identity.

• The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath

  A life under pressure, rendered in luminous prose.

• Trigger Warning — Meghna Prakash

  Poems about madness, memory, and survival.

For clinicians, teachers & group facilitators

• Maps of Narrative Practice / Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends — White & Epston

  Practical steps and handouts for narrative interventions.

• Emotionally Focused Therapy texts

  For couples clinicians doing attachment repair.

• Care Work — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

  For integrating disability justice into clinical practice.

How to use this list

• Read a memoir first if you want empathy and orientation; read a theory book when you want to translate experience into practice.
• Mix genres: pair a clinical text with a memoir (e.g. Trauma and Recovery with The Collected Schizophrenias) to balance theory and lived voice.
• For group work, choose two or three short essays or chapters and build reflective prompts; for school workshops, pick one accessible memoir and one practice handout.
• If something triggers you while reading — stop. Ground, breathe, and use the safety-plan worksheet in our resources before continuing.
• The list is always expanding — reach out any time for resource requests.