A review by laindarko2
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

To ask oneself or someone else to write about their experience with mental illness is an almost impossible request. Not only are there limits inherent to language, it is challenging not to feel overly self-indulgent in the process; it is challenging to be that vulnerable; it is also difficult not to become distant and removed during the writing process, defaulting to self-reporting and avoiding the (potentially re-traumatizing) process of truly capturing what your illness feels like. For this reason I greatly respect Wang's essays for being so lucid and informative. I did, however, feel like there was a distance or remove between the essays and myself as the reader. There was a lot of listing of facts, listing events but not quite describing them - I did not come away feeling as if I had an understanding of Wang's experiences. When I read an essay, I want it to, in some way, change something about how I think or see things. I want to feel encapsulated in a new idea or feeling. None of these really did that for me. That's okay, it only means they're not really to my taste. This book is a good introduction for people unfamiliar with schizoaffective disorders, but if you've ever done any research or reading on them before, you won't learn anything new here.