Books
Swimming To The Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and Street-Corner Social Work
“Zak Mucha begins this extraordinary book wondering if he genuinely wants to help his psychotic, criminal, and often drug addled clients, or if he’s an adrenaline junky trying to resolve the conflict of being both a writerly-sensitive type and a tough guy. In fact, not so very unlike those he seeks to help. We should remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Only the person with such a questioning, personal investment can do street corner social work with people society has thrown asunder. Erik Erickson noted that for those labeled delinquent, their greatest need and only source of salvation can come from someone who refuses to confirm them in their criminality. Few have the courage; even fewer have the verve to really write about it. I love this book.”
—JAMIESON WEBSTER, Psychoanalyst and author of Disorganization and Sex, and others
“As a social worker, Zak Mucha did a job for seven years that most people wouldn't do for seven minutes. His clients were the people most of us cross the street to avoid. But there's no clinical snobbery or academic posturing here. Mucha's gift - as a writer and on the street - is his ability to cut through assumptions and pretensions - and in the cases of his clients, psychosis - and make a connection. Swimming to the Horizon is a brave, compassionate, often hilarious book about the true cost of helping others, and all that we get in return.”
—TREY BUNDY, journalist at The Center for Investigative Reporting
Available here: Indie Bound
Available here: Indie Bound
We have been incorrectly socialized to believe emotional abuse is not as damaging as physical or sexual abuse. We have been taught emotional abuse itself is nothing more than “hurt feelings” and there is no “real” evidence other than the victim’s complaints. The victim of emotional abuse is dismissed precisely because he or she cannot “prove” their feelings. Emotional abuse creates a vicious dynamic where the victim is taught his or her feelings do not count and any pain suffered is, somehow, their own fault. This damage can radiate throughout every aspect of a life.
Like any other abuse, emotional abuse is about power. Whoever can define reality has the ultimate power. In emotional abuse, the aggressor attempts to define reality with statements like, “You’re too sensitive,” and “I couldn’t help it. You made me mad.” Each statement is an attempt to shape how another person perceives reality.
Our self-defense depends on our willingness to identify the boundaries that define who we are and the criteria we desire for relationship. In doing this, we can defend ourselves and define our selves.
“Zak Mucha's words are dangerous to abusers, because his words mean things, and they name things. They name and describe the mechanisms of emotional abuse, and in doing so they provide weapons of self-defense and methods of liberation.”
--from the introduction by DOGO BARRY GRAHAM, Zen Buddhist monk
Available here: bookshop.org
Continuing the western tradition of “bastard ghazals” that do not hold to the form or intent of the 13th century Sufi mystics who wrote of religious devotion and erotic longing, these poems are collages tracing a route at the edges of suburban houses filled with doppelganger children, county jails and flophouse hotels, Sonny Liston and Geechie Wiley, Maurice Sendak and the Lindburgh baby, Philip Guston, Willie Bobo, recidivist airline stowaways, and the numinous messages left between clouds and garbage dumpsters.
“I like the meat of these poems, the tear and slap of them. I still feel them between my teeth long after reading them. Zak Mucha has a toughness and a way of bringing blood to the page that I admire. But I wouldn't get confused about what you are eating when you are reading these words: he is serving you his own heart.”
– JESSA CRISPIN, founder of Bookslut, author of My Three Dads
Available here: Better World Books
Articles
- Reassembling Fragments - Room: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (2020)
- Measuring Up: The boundaries of working-class masculinity. Tuck Magazine, March 2018
- Flitcraft's Basement: Art, Annihilation and Inclusion. Spolia Magazine, October 2016
- Leaving The Underground, an afterword to Andrew Vachss: Underground (Dark Horse, 2014)
- The Trick is Not Minding That it Hurts: Psychosis, childhood trauma, and self-definition. Spolia Magazine 7, January 2014
- Emotional Abuse: The Rules of Engagement