Joven, Extranjera, y Deprimida en América: Ruminations of an Immigrant to Prozac Nation

Abstract

In the spirit of disciplinary disobedience, this autoethnography aims to challenge sociological analyses on the subjective experience of mental health and most plots found in psychiatric memoirs written by U.S. (White) women. Guided by insights from intersectionality theory, Chicanx/Latinx, Black, and Women of Color (WOC) scholarship, this text (re)conceptualizes depression as an embodied social critique, affective logic, and emotional reaction to the sense of uncertainty defined by one’s social location and forced acts of survival along shifting borderlands. This piece also outlines two intersectional knowledge projects that have emerged from this disruption: one is a series of collaborations with other WOC in the creation of affective maps to understand the role of larger societal forces in triggering states of emotional distress and other health conditions, and the other is my work as a public sociologist using my research on Latinas in therapy to educate and work alongside Anglo mental health clinicians.