“Somebody asked me a long time ago: ‘From what emotion did you write this book?’, and I said, ‘rage,’” Susanna Kaysen shared about her 1993 memoir, “Girl, Interrupted.” To a room of curious listeners, each clutching their own copy of the book, this insight struck a chord. In a time when mental health wasn’t talked about openly, Kaysen wrote on her experience authentically and powerfully. Her words continue to captivate readers, and bookstores continue to shelve this literary classic. If art is to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, Kaysen has succeeded.

On April 12, Porter Square Books hosted the Cambridge-born author for a 30th anniversary book talk on her best-selling memoir. Kaysen’s memoir is an account of her time at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric institution in Belmont, Mass. At 18 years old, Kaysen was brought to the hospital in a taxi and admitted for 18 months, from 1967–68. She wrote of the women she met, the hospital staff and the experience of being kept away from the outside world. The hospital was a parallel universe with different facts of life, inspiring a new perspective on the world outside McLean’s walls. As she put it, “Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.”