Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

5 reviews

vercopaanir's review

emotional informative reflective slow-paced

Again, this book is very much like a memoir and so I choose to leave it un-rated, but I was fascinated by Wang’s experiences and really appreciated that she was willing to share them so publicly as to write them in a book.  I do my best not to be ableist, but I know I have work to do, and that includes ableism around psychosis and the schizophrenias.  Being invited into the mind of someone with schizoaffective disorder was an incredible opportunity for learning and growth.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Murder, Bullying, and Chronic illness

Moderate: Suicide, Sexual assault, Medical content, Ableism, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, and Rape

eve81's review against another edition

informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Torture

Moderate: Suicide

demo's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This is a tough one to try and rate. I thoroughly enjoyed this book but did recoil at the pseudoscience and mysticism in last 20% or so. I was raised in a family that attempted to treat my childhood and adolescent illness with a wide range of expensive pseudoscientific remedies, and while I don't deny that Wang seems to gain grounding and comfort from the experience, I struggle to ascribe good faith motives to the practitioners treating her chronic health issues with similar costly means. I take issue with the author on many a point, but still found her perspective fascinating and her writing compelling. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Chronic illness, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Medical content, Murder, Suicide attempt, Confinement, Ableism, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Rape, and Suicide

Minor: Pedophilia

courtneyfalling's review

I had heard only good things about this collection so I was pretty excited for it, but from the beginning, I had a bad feeling. There's an uncomfortable combination of internalized ableism and isolation/alienation from larger disability community and politics, where I felt very on edge as a reader who identifies as disabled and Mad.

The first big, definable red flag was an essay that makes excuses for why a mother and sister brutally killed their schizophrenic son/brother, with an emphasis on their fatigue and not the inherent worth of their son/brother even if he never "recovered," and with no larger history or analysis of disability-related filicide (which, check out this link to Disability Day of Mourning information if you've never heard of this before, CW for death, grief, and ableism: https://disability-memorial.org/).

But I finally decided to DNF after "The Choice of Children," which features a heavy and uninspected emphasis on functional labels (which have so many issues), unnecessary and repeated use of the R slur, and an uncomfortable argument on why she doesn't want to have children to potentially pass genetic disability onto (which, it feels like eugenics should be discussed here, somehow? Like the history and current landscape of eugenics absolutely affects why some disabled people, especially those alienated from community and politics, don't want to birth potentially disabled children. And that doesn't automatically mean you should have children, that there aren't also valid reasons to not want to birth or raise children, but like... you cannot discuss this phenomenon independently of eugenics and if you're acting like you are it's probably just uncritically replicating neoeugenic logic). 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Mental illness, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Self harm, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Ableism

queertrash's review

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Mental illness, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Violence

Moderate: Confinement, Medical content, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts