Authors:

  • Esmé Weijun Wang
Cover of The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

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 communitys 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, Wangs analytical eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with personal narrative.

Citations

Wang, Esmé Weijun. The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2019.