Status
Checked out
Publication
Graywolf Press (2019), 224 pages
Description
"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"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member chrisblocker
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
Like any
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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. Show Less
LibraryThing member jasoncomely
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.
LibraryThing member akblanchard
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
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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member over.the.edge
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
by Esme Weijun Wang
2019
Graywolf 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
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.
by Esme Weijun Wang
2019
Graywolf 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
Show More
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.
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LibraryThing member greeniezona
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
An amazing book.
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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.
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LibraryThing member nancyjean19
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
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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. Show Less
LibraryThing member invisiblelizard
Really an excellent deep dive into the world of schizophrenia from a first person point of view. The writing is excellent, as well as the insight and detail (both hers and historical). Wang clearly did (has done) a ton of research into her own problems to better understand them, and she shares all
A couple notes: First of all, a number of these chapters were originally published as essays in various locations, therefore the continuity (flow) of this book is a little disjointed. Don't expect a linear telling of her history with this disease. (More adept readers of non-fiction would probably not be expecting this, but I, the amateur that I am, found it a little disorienting.)
Second, the last quarter of this book contains a few chapters that don't address schizophrenia itself but some alternate diagnoses that she has gotten over the years as well as her diving into religious and mystical thoughts surrounding the disease. Personally I found these chapters less interesting that the first three-quarters of the book. Still well written, but not really on point (imo). Felt to me like (maybe?) they were thrown in to flesh this book out into (what somebody considered) a proper length, but that's a conspiracy I perhaps too often throw out when I feel that a published work could have been trimmed a little.
However, buried in that last quarter somewhere was this line: "Sick people, as it turns out, generally stray into alternative medicine not because they relish the idea of indulging in what others call quackery, but because traditional Western medicine has failed them." Which felt to me like a powerful statement and propelled me through to the end to fully understand what she has gone through.
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of that with us, the reader.A couple notes: First of all, a number of these chapters were originally published as essays in various locations, therefore the continuity (flow) of this book is a little disjointed. Don't expect a linear telling of her history with this disease. (More adept readers of non-fiction would probably not be expecting this, but I, the amateur that I am, found it a little disorienting.)
Second, the last quarter of this book contains a few chapters that don't address schizophrenia itself but some alternate diagnoses that she has gotten over the years as well as her diving into religious and mystical thoughts surrounding the disease. Personally I found these chapters less interesting that the first three-quarters of the book. Still well written, but not really on point (imo). Felt to me like (maybe?) they were thrown in to flesh this book out into (what somebody considered) a proper length, but that's a conspiracy I perhaps too often throw out when I feel that a published work could have been trimmed a little.
However, buried in that last quarter somewhere was this line: "Sick people, as it turns out, generally stray into alternative medicine not because they relish the idea of indulging in what others call quackery, but because traditional Western medicine has failed them." Which felt to me like a powerful statement and propelled me through to the end to fully understand what she has gone through.
Show Less
LibraryThing member arosoff
At best, it's a cliché to describe someone with mental illness as having insight. It's very much a loaded term, and one that Esmé Weijun Wang addresses in her book of essays. Nonetheless, insight is what she has--not only into her illness (primarily schizoaffective disorder) but into herself in
Stories of mental illness can fall into some well worn traps: there's the tragic memoir, the triumph over adversity, and the "It's not really an illness". Luckily, she falls into none of these. Schizophrenia has not been easy for Wang, and it has not been a blessing, or her source of creativity. However, she's also very aware of the things in her life that have enabled her to be, in her own words, a "high functioning" schizophrenic: her education, her support system. She's unafraid to recount her experiences with delusions and hallucinations, with the Cotard delusion, with PTSD, with her family history of mental illness, and to consider its cost in her life, including her decision not to have children.
Schizophrenia and related disorders, which Wang refers to as "the schizophrenias", are the most feared and most stigmatized of mental illnesses. Wang's own psychiatrist avoided the diagnosis. Literature speaks of schizophrenia as erasing the "real person" within; there's a public association of schizophrenia with violence. The essays do not just address Wang's own personal experience of schizoaffective disorder, but the system: inadequate and patchy treatment, forcing people against their will into treatment, dehumanizing people with mental illness, kicking students out of college, the devaluation of the mentally ill when they are not capable of employment--this being the marker of worth in a capitalist society.
The chronic Lyme essay was the hardest for me; it's hard for me to invalidate her experience, and I sympathize with the desire for answers. At the same time, I've been following the Lyme debate for a decade, and the ways in which the chronic Lyme treatment providers make a lot of money the patients often don't have makes me uncomfortable, and it's hard for me to regard it as harmless.
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general, her life, and society's attitude towards the mentally ill. Stories of mental illness can fall into some well worn traps: there's the tragic memoir, the triumph over adversity, and the "It's not really an illness". Luckily, she falls into none of these. Schizophrenia has not been easy for Wang, and it has not been a blessing, or her source of creativity. However, she's also very aware of the things in her life that have enabled her to be, in her own words, a "high functioning" schizophrenic: her education, her support system. She's unafraid to recount her experiences with delusions and hallucinations, with the Cotard delusion, with PTSD, with her family history of mental illness, and to consider its cost in her life, including her decision not to have children.
Schizophrenia and related disorders, which Wang refers to as "the schizophrenias", are the most feared and most stigmatized of mental illnesses. Wang's own psychiatrist avoided the diagnosis. Literature speaks of schizophrenia as erasing the "real person" within; there's a public association of schizophrenia with violence. The essays do not just address Wang's own personal experience of schizoaffective disorder, but the system: inadequate and patchy treatment, forcing people against their will into treatment, dehumanizing people with mental illness, kicking students out of college, the devaluation of the mentally ill when they are not capable of employment--this being the marker of worth in a capitalist society.
The chronic Lyme essay was the hardest for me; it's hard for me to invalidate her experience, and I sympathize with the desire for answers. At the same time, I've been following the Lyme debate for a decade, and the ways in which the chronic Lyme treatment providers make a lot of money the patients often don't have makes me uncomfortable, and it's hard for me to regard it as harmless.
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LibraryThing member LivelyLady
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.
LibraryThing member bmanglass
This reminds me that I should really read more books of essays! I really enjoyed this collection and it expanded my understanding of what a life living with schizoaffective disorder can feel like. Wang seamlessly references medical research, pop culture, and spiritual and religious beliefs to
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create a series of portraits of her life with mental illness. Show Less
LibraryThing member joannajuki
It was remarkable to read this highly intelligent scientist's account of what she terms her condition, but it reads more like a list of symptoms than any kind of cohesive work of literature. The characters that move in and out of her life, even the obscure 'C', her husband, don't carry any
Doctors and diagnoses come and go, including sexual abuse and trauma by a past criminal boyfriend. But again, there's an emotional disconnect about his late introduction to the book. He was, apparently, the one who ended their relationship.
Suggestions about her condition and its possible causes, in terms that only real scientists might really understand, don't lead to a resolution. A lot ails her, but we never find out exactly what it was, only that it got better after she started lighting candles and using Tarot cards. I just wish she would have got better earlier than the last paragraph.
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emotional weight. While we sense that her mother has instilled her with fortitude, she is represented by a very few brief scenes and quotations. Her father is even more invisible. Almost all we know about him is that he was untruthful about his whereabouts on the night he brought her away from Yale. We don't even find out why he felt he should lie. Doctors and diagnoses come and go, including sexual abuse and trauma by a past criminal boyfriend. But again, there's an emotional disconnect about his late introduction to the book. He was, apparently, the one who ended their relationship.
Suggestions about her condition and its possible causes, in terms that only real scientists might really understand, don't lead to a resolution. A lot ails her, but we never find out exactly what it was, only that it got better after she started lighting candles and using Tarot cards. I just wish she would have got better earlier than the last paragraph.
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Awards
Golden Poppy Book Award (Shortlist — Non-Fiction — 2019)
Reading Women Award (Shortlist — Nonfiction — 2019)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Nonfiction — 2020)
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2019)
NPR: Books We Love (2019)
Los Angeles Public Library Best of the Year (Non-Fiction — 2019)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2019
Physical description
224 p.; 5.5 inches
ISBN
1555978274 / 9781555978273
Local notes
essay