How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind

"Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly." So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as "rage," and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms. With care and verve, he explores the mad in the literature of Amiri Baraka, Gayl Jones, and Ntozake Shange; in the jazz repertoires of Buddy Bolden, Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus; in the comedic performances of Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle; in the protest music of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar, and beyond. These artists activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition. Joining this tradition, Bruce mobilizes a set of interpretive practices, affective dispositions, political principles, and existential orientations that he calls "mad methodology." Ultimately, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind is both a study and an act of critical, ethical, radical madness.

La Marr Jurelle Bruce is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Acknowledgments  ix 1. Mad Is a Place  1 2. "He Blew His Brains Out through the Trumpet": Buddy Bolden and the Impossible Sound of Madness  36 Interlude. "No Wiggles in the Dark of Her Soul": Black Madness, Metaphor, and "Murder!"  71 3. The Blood-Stained Bed  79 4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Mad Black Woman  110 5. "The People inside My Head, Too": Ms. Lauryn Hill Sings Truth to Power in the Key of Madness  139 6. The Joker's Wild but That Nigga's Crazy: Dave Chappelle Laughs until It Hurts  172 7. Songs in Madtime: Black Music, Madness, and Metaphysical Syncopation  201 Afterword. The Nutty Professor (A Confession)  231 Notes  239 Bibliography  303 Index  333