Jody Chan’s Madness Belongs to the People turns to psychiatric-survivor histories and resistance
Jody Chan’s third poetry collection, Madness Belongs to the People, was published by Brick Books on Sept. 22, 2026.
Photo credit: Albert Hoang
Jody Chan’s third poetry collection, Madness Belongs to the People, was published by Brick Books on Sept. 22. The 138-page book examines psychiatric survivor- and patient-led movements through poems that also engage with disability, colonialism and capitalism. Brick Books describes the collection as an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist account of movements from Germany to Japan, with madness considered as resistance and political strategy.
Chan moves between prose and lyric poetry and draws on the work of writers, artists and activists including Frantz Fanon, Etel Adnan and Solmaz Sharif. According to Brick Books, the poems range across activist movements during the Second World War, the late 20th century and the present. The collection also works with nonverbal, gestural and sonic forms of communication, bringing sound and different forms of expression into its historical and political concerns.
Those subjects connect directly with Chan’s previous Brick Books collection, impact statement, published in 2024. In that book, Chan borrowed and disrupted the forms of patient records, psychiatric assessments and court documents while tracing the history of psychiatric institutions within a settler colonial state. impact statement also addressed capitalism and “wellness” checks alongside migration, intergenerational trauma, gentrification and police neglect of racialized violence against queer communities in Toronto. With Madness Belongs to the People, Chan extends that work into a wider history of psychiatric-survivor and patient-led political movements.
Chan uses they/them pronouns and describes themself as a writer, care worker, arts administrator and community organizer based in Toronto/Tkaronto. Their earlier collection sick, published by Black Lawrence Press, won the 2021 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Chan’s three poetry collections are sick, impact statement and Madness Belongs to the People.
Madness Belongs to the People is available from Brick Books in trade paperback and EPUB/PDF editions.
