The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

I learned a lot about what it's like to live with schizoaffective disorder through this memoir and collection of essays. I also live with a mental illness so I can empathize on the struggles on managing it on tough days and good days. Still, there is a huge stigma for people with schizophrenia and I'm glad that Esme brought to light her reality living with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder.

A beautifully written piece of literary nonfiction that blends memoir and essay in the style of writers like Rebecca Solnit. The collected schizophrenias explores writer Esme Weijun Wang's experience living with schizoaffective disorder. As a health worker in training I found it essential reading.

I did not get into her story as I was waiting for. Sometimes I feel her pain, her anxious, and the way she described her feelings was enough for me to make me feel sad of her condition and understand how this illness works.

But, for example, I did not enjoy the last quarter of the book. I find it confusing in terms of structure and the organization of her ideas. Did not know if it was the purpose, but I lost the attention of her arguments in the last section.

“I tweeted, What would you do if you were actually dead, and the life you were living right now was your second chance?” Pg. 149

This book is a personal recollection of the schizophrenias, i.e., the diseases that were created to explain the phenomena of a recurrent cluster of symptoms. The narratives of the delusions, hallucinations, the comorbidity of schizophrenia with other psychiatric diseases is authentic and it resonates with experiences of psychosis recorded elsewhere. The author also points to new scientific and non-scientific directions of the analysis of the schizophrenias and their treatment. It's a short, but fantastic book, that makes the discussion of schizophrenias in mainstream less fantastical and more realistic, displaying the suffering that usually follows these diseases.

A grab bag of essays covering many areas of mental health and illness. Some were very interesting. Some were not so much. Many showed how high functioning Wang is, regardless of her diagnoses. Others showed a need to shield behind cultural references and extensive forays into religion.

Like any collection, there are highs and lows. Overall, this one didn't make as big of an impact as I hoped it would, but it definitely provided some insight, specifically into schizophrenic disorders.

What does it mean to be “insane?” This book not only looks at how we define and determine what it is to be schizophrenic but also the horrors the opaque nature of diagnoses. However horrible the experience is to be mentally ill, to have the science behind it be so vague forces many to live without real determination of what is actually wrong. Wang shows without fantastical language just how horrible mental illness can be.

The book is a collection of essays and by its nature lacks a cohesive through-line. In fact, even within each essay, I found the writing haphazard. In some ways I wanted the book to provide the reader a way to see behind the mask of schizophrenia and better understand the experience, but what we see instead is that each experience is unique to the individual. Wang makes up for this, though, with both research and personal anecdote.

As good as everyone says it is. Ready to reread.

For the Read Harder Challenge: A book by or about someone who identifies as neurodiverse. This is a collection of personal essays about Wang's life with schizoaffective disorder, Lyme disease, and PTSD. Such a strong and intelligent work.