Up Next: The Book, Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South (Studies in Social Medicine)...

I like to refresh my usual mix of mystery and speculative fiction with nonfiction that gives me something new to think about.

Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South (Studies in Social Medicine), by Kylie M. Smith, immediately caught my attention. It explores how systemic racism, white supremacy, and the plantation system shaped psychiatric care for Black Southerners during the Jim Crow era. That is a powerful and unsettling premise—and since institutional corruption and injustice never fail to stir my righteous indignation, this book feels right up my alley.

I’ll share my thoughts when I’m through.