A Mad Mess: Disabled Queer Femme of Color World Making

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AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 10, 2026

By: Shayda Kafai

A liberating book for Mad, neurodiverse, and disabled QTBIPOC folks to create a more equitable and playful future in institutions and systems that were not made for them

As Mad, neurodiverse, and disabled QTBIPOC folks working in institutions, we are in need of healing. We are at the mercy of systems that bet on our exhaustion, extracted labor, and burnout. A Mad Mess defiantly and unapologetically refuses to wait for these institutions to change.

Based on her own experience as an educator, Kafai reveals how "mess" is at the heart of this book and her life. Mess is a Mad, queer, femme, and decolonial tool that intervenes in oppressive institutional structures. It also resists the narratives of perfectionism and people pleasing that are rooted in ableism and sanism and adapted into academia. Mess is the portal we need in order to stay and transform institutions into what we need them to be.

Informed by the genre-bending works of Alice Wong and adrienne maree brown, A Mad Mess centers the imperfect, defiant, and tender Mad resistance strategies to our thriving that are always, above all, messy. Part love letter and part aspirational guide, A Mad Mess amplifies the Mad dreaming and mourning we need if we are to create a liberatory future that truly embraces and supports us.