Infrarrealista Review: I Got Issues: The Heavy-Handed Mental Health Issue
Overview
Infrarrealista Review is a magazine that positions itself at the intersection of raw personal narrative and formal experimentation. This themed issue, 'I Got Issues: The Heavy-Handed Mental Health Issue,' invites work that engages with mental health not as a clinical abstraction but as lived, chaotic, and often institutional experience. The editors explicitly ask for 'pure chaos,' signaling an openness to unconventional forms and voices that resist tidy resolution. The call is shaped by a set of provocative prompts: institutionalization, DSM-5 diagnoses, identification with Adjani's character in Possession, and the desperate search for a lobotomy. These references suggest a curatorial vision that embraces the extreme, the unhinged, and the darkly humorous. The issue is not for work that treats mental health with polite distance; it is for work that emerges from the thick of it. Contributors are paid, and the magazine states it will 'literally consider anything,' though word counts should be checked on their site. The Texas connection requirement is non-negotiable: work without it will be rejected. This geographic specificity roots the issue in a particular community, even as the themes are universal. The $5 fee is a barrier to entry, but it is modest and likely supports the magazine's contributor payments.