Transition 115

Book excerpt: Published three times per year by Indiana University Press for the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling ideas from and about the black world. Since its founding in Uganda in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the African Diaspora and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate. This issue of Transition focuses on "Mad." The editors look at connections between blackness and psychology, examining Richard Wright's attempts to bring clinical psychotherapy to Harlem and revealing the links between schizophrenia and fears of black "psychos." As Ferguson, Missouri becomes the latest community to rage against the state-sanctioned murder of unarmed black men, we ask what James Baldwin and Stokely Carmichael might have to tell us about why African Americans continue to be pushed to the margins of American society. The editors also examine the marginalized community of black Palestinians, doubly imperiled by Israeli slaughter and internal racism. And finally, on a lighter note, discover music and art that we're "mad" about—from Otis Redding and Vijay Iyer to Kara Walker and Christopher Cozier.