Undead - by Madeline Vosch (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A revealing memoir about the complicated truths of surviving a suicide attempt and rethinking the concept of "suicide prevention" to create a world that people want to live in

Madeline Vosch did everything she was supposed to do when the suicidal thoughts started. Or she tried. Between studying, working three jobs to make rent, navigating the impossible bureaucracy of Boston's welfare system to access food stamps and nominally affordable mental health care, there was not a moment she was not fixated on survival. One night in April 2018, weeks before her graduation from Harvard Divinity school, she walked home from a party with a single intention: to take as many pills as she could stomach, and never wake up.

But then she did. And she was left with a question: what now?

In Undead, Vosch deftly weaves together lyric prose, memoir, and cultural commentary to tell the story of what happens after a suicide attempt. Here, she sets off on a journey to find her kindred spirits in surviving the end of a story, investigating the various scripts she encountered in the weeks and months after her attempt--from other works of art that touch on the topic of suicide, to Christian theology, to medical texts, to episodes of ER, to the news cycle as reports of increased suicide rates confirmed her suspicion: she was not alone in her attempt, even if she had no one to talk to about what came after. She might be changed, but what did that matter if the world that had ground her down wasn't?

Vosch turns the concept of "suicide prevention" on its head, asking what it might look like to reconceive suicidality as a response to a social problem. She challenges us to incorporate "prevention" into a larger social vision that intersects with increased access to housing, to food, to healthcare--in short, creating a world that people can and want to live in.

Review Quotes

"Harrowing, completely without flinch, Madeline Vosch's Undead may be the most uncomfortably human book I've ever read. And so beautifully written: What did it feel like, the coming back? It felt like rooting in the leaves for months, mouth to the ground, eyes in the dirt, searching for anything at all that could guide me forward. Any time a writer is able to recount hard times, this recounting is, in itself, proof of endurance; here, we are not provided too much reassurance, however ( . . . there in my mind, tossing, daily, is the question: Is it okay that I lived?), and the questions and provocations will trouble any reader long after they finish reading. This book! So straight, exasperated, ongoing, a testament and a call to understanding."
--Peter Rock, author of My Abandonment

About the Author

Madeline Vosch is a writer, a translator, and a professor. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, the Washington Post, and The Rumpus, among others. She was awarded the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award for Nonfiction and was an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow.