Race had a key role in the construction of madness and literary value and thus in periodical production in asylums, especially in the United States. Contributing to a periodical enabled educated white patients not only to express their creativity, enlightenment, and agency, but to reclaim their citizenship, at least figuratively. The launch of the Meteor in 1872 by a former plantation owner and patient at the Alabama Insane Hospital, Joseph Alexander Goree, was an act of rebellion against the irony of losing his own liberty and rights once he was certified as insane. The periodical was part of a larger campaign of literary activity through which he demonstrated his erudition, high taste, and reason. Recasting himself as an ally and collaborator to the superintendent, Goree found empowerment in maintaining the high literary quality of his publication and keeping madness out of it. Yet, the Meteor was far from a homogeneous polished account of the asylum: during its irregular run, it embodied different viewpoints as well as Goree’s declining enthusiasm and growing discontent, as he realised that his project of self-empowerment would fail to earn him his freedom and rights.