The Paradox
The British Empire used mental health to assert white supremacy in its colonies. But we still needed a diagnosis.
Illustration by Prachi Gupta
It’s not very often that the word “necessary” in a book review feels, well, necessary. And yet, more than perhaps any other book to come across my desk this year, I want to shout from the mountaintops and the depths of the sea — upward, downward, and everywhere in between — that Journalist Prachi Gupta has penned one of the most gripping blends of memoir and reporting, writing a book whose page-turning is compelled as much by masterful macro-level storytelling as by memoir. By turns angry and achingly indicts not only the assimilation myths of the United States, but the world of mental healthcare. In this outtake — just six spare paragraphs — Gupta undoes conventional wisdom about both.
