PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ralph, Laurence
TI  - Becoming Aggrieved: An Alternative Framework of Care in Black Chicago
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2015.1.2.03
DP  - 2015 Nov 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 31--41
VI  - 1
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/1/2/31.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/1/2/31.full
AB  - Centering on “Eastwood,” a low-income, African American community on the West Side of Chicago in which I have conducted ethnographic research since 2007, I examine the coping mechanisms developed by residents after Mrs. Lana suffers what her doctors view as a psychotic break. I build upon Judith Butler’s conception of grief to reconceptualize madness as a sometimes productive force that allows scholars to see how certain populations are systematically dehumanized. After divulging a brief history of Mrs. Lana’s community, wherein I discuss how it came to inhabit the socioeconomic markers of poverty it is known for today, I explore in further detail the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Lana’s mental illness. Ultimately, I argue that the story of her “madness” is productive because it gives us valuable insight into the ways in which blacks, especially those living in low-income communities that face a dearth of institutional resources, invert popular expectations of mourning, thereby developing a concept of “becoming aggrieved” that does not merely lament death, but also affirms life.