Synopsis
Focusing on the history of the Ingutsheni Lunatic Asylum (renamed a mental hospital after 1933), situated near Bulawayo in the former Southern Rhodesia, Surfacing Up explores the social, cultural, and political history of the colony that became Zimbabwe after gaining its independence in 1980. The phrase "surfacing up" was drawn from a conversation Lynette A. Jackson had with a psychiatric nurse who used the concept to explain what brought African potential patients into the psychiatric system. Jackson uses Ingutsheni as a reference point for the struggle to "domesticate" Africa and its citizens after conquest.