Duke U boycott and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest": love it or hate it?

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Very forward thinking 11th grade. Clearly you were in the US. Your other OP said you lived in

a 'traditional' country with extended families and 'escaped' that but this OP has you reading this book in the US as a kid. So if you moved here, your parents brought you here.
Cuckoo's Nest is about mental patients, their behavior is not supposed to be commendable the book is about the institutional systems that create the patients and make monsters out of the staff, jailers out of nurses and so forth.
Had you actually read the book, you would recall that it is narrated by Chief Bromden, who calls the system 'The Combine'. None of the characters are seen as having actual self determination, they are damned off like the Chief's beloved Colombia River has been. His point of view is the book's point of view.

The book as published in 1962, it is therefore set in the 1950's. At that time, such institutions were in fact abusive and did in fact punish sexuality and serve to repress many people who were not in fact mentally ill.
This system did in fact institutionalize gay people for being gay, gave them electric shocks and other tortures. Dale Harding, a character in this book, represents one such patient.