Unraveling: An Autoethnography of Suicide and Renewal

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.

M. F. Alvarez is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire, USA, where he teaches mental health communication, end of life communication, human communication and technology, and film studies. He is the recipient of an Outstanding Creative Project/Performance Award from the National Communication Association, Asian/Pacific American Studies Division and Caucus.