Unraveling: An Autoethnography of Suicide and Renewal, is an autoethnographic story that explores the intricate relationship among trauma, marginality, and mental health. It follows Mike Alvarez, a precocious gay teenager from an immigrant Filipino family who loses his grip on reality as he succumbs to so-called mental illness. Divided into two parts, the first half of the book uses evocative storytelling and in-the-moment narration to capture the slow descent into anxiety, paranoia, depression, and suicidality, as experienced by the author during young adulthood. The second half of the book critically reflects upon the story through a series of analytic chapters. In these chapters, the author considers the role of narrative in cultivating empathy for the mentally ill, the psychiatric-industrial complex’s obstruction of that empathy, and the moral dilemmas autoethnographers face when writing about self, other, and the social world. This book will be suitable for scholars in the social sciences, communication studies, and healthcare who study and use autoethnography in their research. It will also be of value to those interested in firsthand accounts of madness, as told by members of marginalized communities.

If creativity is the highest expression of the life impulse, why do creative individuals who have made lasting contributions to the arts and sciences so often end their lives? M.F. Alvarez addresses this central paradox by exploring the inner lives and works of eleven creative visionaries who succumbed to suicide. Through a series of case studies, Alvarez shows that creativity and suicide are both attempts to authenticate and resolve personal catastrophes that have called into question the most basic conditions of human existence.

Unraveling: An Autoethnography of Suicide and Renewal, is an autoethnographic story that explores the intricate relationship among trauma, marginality, and mental health. It follows Mike Alvarez, a precocious gay teenager from an immigrant Filipino family who loses his grip on reality as he succumbs to so-called mental illness. Divided into two parts, the first half of the book uses evocative storytelling and in-the-moment narration to capture the slow descent into anxiety, paranoia, depression, and suicidality, as experienced by the author during young adulthood. The second half of the book critically reflects upon the story through a series of analytic chapters. In these chapters, the author considers the role of narrative in cultivating empathy for the mentally ill, the psychiatric-industrial complex’s obstruction of that empathy, and the moral dilemmas autoethnographers face when writing about self, other, and the social world. This book will be suitable for scholars in the social sciences, communication studies, and healthcare who study and use autoethnography in their research. It will also be of value to those interested in firsthand accounts of madness, as told by members of marginalized communities.