The Patient Is an Unreliable Historian

by Brody Parrish Craig

A poetry collection that questions the current construction of psychiatric treatment while speaking through lived experience and advocating for disability justice.
 
The poems of Brody Parrish Craig’s new collection upends narratives around current psychiatric treatment models to focus on the lived experience of survivors and to speak toward liberation, abolition, and disability justice. Titled after the author’s own medical records, The Patient Is an Unreliable Historian questions the prevailing narrative that the medical industry knows stories of disability and madness better than those who have lived them.
 
Craig uses lyricism to expose the intersection of madness and criminality in contemporary American culture, moving through institutions, community spaces, and loss of kin. Through the course of the collection, the speaker turns toward irreverence and interrogation, carves out their own freedom, and challenges the script of the patient, the mad, and the “criminal.” These poems deconstruct the “patient” to set the person free.
 

Genres: Poetry

108 pages, Paperback

Published November 6, 2024

Reviews

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really solid, thought-provoking collection of poems. There’s great word play throughout the pages that kept me excited in anticipation for the next line. Not to mention, the experiences that Brody Parrish Craig is speaking about are incredibly deep, personal, and relatable for many queer folks. I really enjoyed this!

Thank you to Omnidawn Publishing for my review copy! This is my honest review.

[Mya Matteo]

“I’ll punch the doors they shut us in / until the copper melts.”