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    The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
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    The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
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    The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
    Ebook226 pages3 hours

    The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

    By Esmé Weijun Wang

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Powerful, affecting essays on mental illness, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and a Whiting Award

    An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community’s own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life. In essays that range from using fashion to present as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis, and from the failures of the higher education system and the dangers of institutionalization to the complexity of compounding factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease, Wang’s analytical eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with personal narrative. An essay collection of undeniable power, The Collected Schizophrenias dispels misconceptions and provides insight into a condition long misunderstood.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 5, 2019
    ISBN9781555978761
    Author

    Esmé Weijun Wang

    Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of The Border of Paradise. She received the Whiting Award in 2018 and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists of 2017. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and lives in San Francisco.

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    Reviews for The Collected Schizophrenias

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      The Collected Schizophrenias: Essaysby Esme Weijun Wang2019Graywolf Press 4.5 / 5.0 A collection of personal essays about the authors experiences being diagnosed as having a schizoaffective disorder. The love and support of her husband and her family, being financially stable, and having natural innate talents for art and writing have been a saving grace for Wang.Every essay deals with the stigma attached to mental illness and its challenges.( Struggling to pass as "normal" and to control the delusions and hallucinations, experiencing Cotard delusion where you believe you are already dead. ) Wang persisted, never gave up. Wang was accepted to Yale but her mental issues were too severe, too chronic, and they let her go. She explores the belief that there is a connection between immune-system dysfunction and neurological and psychiatric diseases. She tried alternative medical treatments, tarot card readings in her search for spiritual healing.Near the end of the book is an essay on her diagnosis of Lyme disease (controversial in itself) that sums up the intention of the entire book for me. Like Lyme disease, so much is known and so much remains a mystery about mental illness. The quality of your diagnosis depends on how your illness is perceived by others. Perception is a huge problem for people with mental illness. How others treat you, and your diagnosis, can make or break a mind.The essays, overall, show how deep and desperate her search for answers and understanding of her condition affected her life. Maybe more so than the actual diagnosis. Great memoir and essays and an excellent resource for those who work with the mentally ill. Recommended.
    • 1/5
      All chapters written by the author who is schizophrenic. I found the half I read to be too clinical and lacking feeling to hold my interest.. I bought this at THE STRAND in NYC. I didn't finish it.
    • 4/5
      This remarkable collection of essays on schizophrenia, mental illness, and the ways our society both portrays and reacts to such, is written by a woman who has herself been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Starting with the journey to this diagnosis, and ranging through topics like the failings of universities toward students with mental illness, the loss of autonomy during institutionalization, the stigma of schizophrenia in particular, the mutability of our perception of reality. I did sometimes wish it has a more memoir-like format -- there were themes and experiences brought up in essays that I wish were returned to later in the book. But that doesn't change what an amazing thing that this book is -- the writing of someone with the intelligence, the support, and the resources to weave together her experiences with studies, academic and medical perspectives and pop culture analysis to really challenge our understanding of mental illness. In the hopes that we can be better colleages, caregivers, storytellers, citizens.An amazing book.
    • 4/5
      Compared to the common stereotype of the "lunatic", author and person with "treatment resistant" schizoaffective disorder Esme Weijun Wang is very high functioning. She is fortunate to have the support of a loving husband and family, as well as financial stability and a great deal of writing and artistic talent. Nonetheless, she struggles to pass for "normal", especially when when she is in the grip of strong delusions and hallucinations. She has even experienced the rare Cotard delusion, in which the sufferer believes that she is already dead. A major theme of this essay collection is the stigma attached to psychotic illnesses; Wang was forced to leave Yale after it became clear that her mental health issues were severe and chronic in nature. She sort of lost me in the final chapters when she suddenly came up with a diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease and started dabbling in "sacred arts". Nonetheless, this memoir in essays offers a valuable perspective on psychotic illness. Well worth reading.
    • 3/5
      I liked the first half, but then it got too sensationalistic for my taste and my interest waned. Still, I almost read it in one sitting, finishing it in a night. Pretty rare for me.
    • 4/5
      At times while reading this collection, I found myself doing exactly what the author describes: Empathizing with and wondering about her friends and family, more than about her. What is her husband's job? What has the relationship been like from his perspective? But these aren't personal essays from the partner of someone living with schizoaffective disorder, and don't pretend to be. They capture something different – how it feels to live inside of a disease that threatens to erase anything you can recognize in yourself. I also felt frustrated that she didn't seem to be exploring her privilege, until I understood that her impressive education and nice clothes are some of the parts of her life that she tries to use to tether herself to reality. This book wasn't what I expected, but I'm glad I read it. It was worth the effort to understand her perspective.