impact statement

by Jody Chan

A revolutionary call to arms wherein the arms are love, art, self-definition, and community care as an alternative to so-called care under carceral capitalism. Borrowing and disrupting the forms of patient records, psychiatric assessments, and court documents, Jody Chan's impact statement traces a history of psychiatric institutions within a settler colonial state. These poems bring the reader into the present moment of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual , capitalism and "money models of madness," and "wellness" checks. Forming a ghost chorus, they sing an impact statement on migration and intergenerational trauma, gentrification, and police neglect of racialized violence against queer communities in Toronto?and how the "wrong" kinds of desire, be it across class, race, or gender lines, or towards other worlds, are often punished or disappeared. And yet, these poems also make space for what can take root, despite?care teams, collective grief rituals, dinners around a table with too many friends to fit?imagining, and re-imagining, and re-imagining again, a queer, disabled, abolitionist revolution towards our communal flourishing.

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2024

Reviews

[Hannah D · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always I am completely blown away by Jody Chan’s poetry

[Stephen Novik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic! A lovingly sympathetic journey into lives that suffered through mental health issues.