Schizophrenia as a Multi-Actor and Intercultural Experience in Josie Méndez-Negrete’s Family Memoir A Life on Hold

Since the turn of the century, there has been a gradual shift from a biomedical to a bio-psycho-socio-existential and interculturally sensitive model of mental illness. This shift, influenced by social movements such as Mad Pride and neurodiversity, has led to the rise of the health humanities. This paper will examine Mexican American author Josie Méndez-Negrete’s memoir A Life on Hold (2015) from a health humanities perspective to evaluate how Latinx memoirs might enrich contemporary medico-cultural knowledge about schizophrenia, which is still stigmatized, including because of its unmistakable gendered, racial, and classist overtones (Granger and Naudin 2022). The memoir has played a crucial role in shaping the development of diagnosis, treatment, and cultural theory of schizophrenia. In our twenty-first-century context, a change in focus in the schizophrenia memoir happened: from viewing schizophrenia as a source of creativity based on the
aesthetic complexities of memoirs (e.g., Deleuze and Guattari 1972) to raising awareness and
providing self-help guidance. Inspired by insights from rhetorical narrative medicine (Phelan 2022), this paper will analyze the narrative features and rhetorical aims of A Life on Hold to determine how twenty-first-century Latinx memoirs might help develop a culturally sensitive model of schizophrenia. In addition, this paper will build on this memoir’s focus on a family relationship (Méndez-Negrete writes about her experience living with her son diagnosed with schizophrenia) to consider the necessity for a multi-actor understanding of mental illness—i.e., always shaped by multiple actors (not only healthcare professionals)—which would hold potential for destigmatization and healing.