Preview

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Becoming

By: Nicole Luongo
Narrated by: Lauren Vandenbrook
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.00

Buy for $20.00

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

The Becoming is a brutal account of mental illness by a woman who doesn't believe in mental illness. As the author embarks on a PhD at the University of Oxford, a lifetime of addiction, eating disorders, and trauma culminates in an explosive hospital stay that sees her achieve liberation through psychosis. Her journey from terror to acceptance is grueling, and she makes meaning of it by weaving reflexive narrative with classic and nascent scholarship. Part phenomenological recounting, part social critique, the text disrupts biomedical approaches to altered states by exploring their emancipatory potential. It also illuminates how conventional mental health treatment pathologizes human suffering. In doing so, The Becoming contributes to anti-psychiatry and Mad studies projects, each asking, "What does it mean to be normal?" and "Should we be sane in an insane world?"

©2021 Nicole Luongo (P)2023 Inanna Publications
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“Gritty and courageous. Powerfully written. A compelling read.”—Helen Humphreys, author of The Evening Chorus

“Vivid and at times lyrical in its storytelling, this memoir is a thought-provoking exposé and politicization of madness. It is clearly written and highly readable yet provides a depth of analysis not often read outside academic texts. Nicole Luongo’s The Becoming stands as an important contribution to both the field of Mad studies and to autobiography as craft.”—Brenda LeFrançois, University Research Professor at Memorial University and co-editor of Mad Matters

The Becoming is a fast-paced narrative that dives headlong into what it means to live while oscillating between states of being variously described as ‘eating disorders,’ ‘mental disorders,’ and ‘substance use disorders.’ Luongo’s memoir digs beneath diagnostic labels to portray life at the edge of life and death in a virtuoso performance of autobiographical writing that reframes the meaning of success and failure, loyalty and betrayal.”—Dr. Richard A. Ingram

What listeners say about The Becoming

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.