Friendship, Love, and Hip Hop ─ An Ethnography of African American Men in Psychiatric Custody

In this unique firsthand account, Hejtmanek explores the path into psychiatric custody, where American youth are institutionalized for comprehensive mental health treatment. Like other forms of state custody in the United States, psychiatric custody is home to disproportionate rates of African American boys. The ostensible goal of psychiatric custody is to transform "troubled youths" into "productive citizens" through highly structured therapeutic regimes and the internalization of new ways of being. While the young men in Hejtmanek's study face the rigidity of institutionalized life, they challenge it in profound ways by productively maneuvering through what the author analyzes as the "give in the system." Hejtmanek offers an insider's view of how friendships, positive intergenerational Black male relationships, love, and hip hop shape healing within the confines of a mental institution.

Katie Rose Hejtmanek is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology and Children and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA.