The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

Wang spoke with the Cut about her new book, unanswerable questions, and navigating the challenges she writes about. And in another, she questions the line between mental illness and prophetic visions, and whether there’s a spiritual element to what she’s experiencing. In another, she describes her experience with involuntary commitment, and interviews people on both sides of the heated debate about whether involuntary mental-health care helps or hurts those who are suffering. In one essay, she describes how she was essentially kicked out of college when her psychosis started acting up, and tackles questions about how mental illness is treated on campuses. In The Collected Schizophrenias, she describes the convoluted and frustrating path that led to this final diagnosis, which was later complicated with an additional diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease. Wang was originally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and later with schizoaffective disorder. An essay collection of undeniable power, The Collected Schizophrenias dispels misconceptions and provides insight into a condition long misunderstood.In her Graywolf Nonfiction Prize–winning essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias (out February 5 from Graywolf), Esmé Weijun Wang combines research and reporting with personal storytelling to examine some of the biggest questions and challenges in the way society views, treats, and talks about mental illness - specifically the widely misunderstood and misrepresented category known as the schizophrenias.

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. 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. 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. 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.

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang