Scan barcode
A review by smuds2
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
3.0
Better than I expected in some ways, a bit more confused in others - as a whole a very enjoyable reading/listening experience. Only rating it a 3 because I think that there were some weaker essays I didn't get much out of.
There were a couple of essays, the names of which, because i read this in audiobook format, I don't know, that I found significantly better than others. There was nothing I didn't like, necessarily - some just felt very honed and felt like they were very clearly coming to a single cohesive idea. Others (like the Cotards syndrome one) felt a bit like it was "this was my experience with it - draw from it what questions you will." While interesting - I found those less engaging.
Three stood out as very good, engaging, and emotional to me.
There was the summer camp volunteer one which I connected with on a variety of levels. For reasons of our own, we've been going back and forth on "should we have kids - shouldn't we". The wavering on our part isn't really for mental health reasons, or as clearly related to mental health as for Esme. Ours are more climate related. But the push of one partner saying yes, while another says no, sometimes being on the same page and feeling like at a cathartic, if sad, position, etc. Was very relatable. On the surface, it's just a very sad, happy, warm, cold story. The complex emotion of relating to a child, to caring for a child, to not needing to care for a child and being free to do so anyway, to wanting to protect a child because it's encountered things similar to you, etc. I think are common enough experiences, but told in such a realistic, and brutal situation to just lay it all out there.
I think that the Yale-indictment was a good read. Nothing too relatable for me. Just a pure "I'm not gonna say it, but you know I could" about how uncaring institutions are for the humans they 'serve'. Well written, well reasoned, well told.
There was an essay about Esmes experience being involuntarily admitted to a mental health facility, and it has come up as an occasional refrain. I think that it is very helpful and valuable to hear someone discuss their experience in a language I understand. Like - I fundamentally think it's a bad idea to involuntarily confine someone, but to hear it described at a non-theoretical, of the pain and trauma you can experience as a result of it - very good to hear and be reminded of.
I'm also not quite how to encapsulate it, but there is also some type of throughline between the autoimmune illness book I recently read by O'Rourke and the discussion on the diagnosis of Esmes illness. In both cases, there is an element of the medical authority trusting the person suffering the illness. In both cases, there is an element of elimination at play (i.e. I've ruled out these other things, so this is what it seems like you have). In both cases - there's an element of ambiguity, and a failing of our current understanding of the human body. In the autoimmune case, we don't have a good understanding of what causes something like ME/CFS, and it attacks multiple organs unpredictably, and can cause seemingly unrelated symptoms, which is at odds with our "human bodys are machines, if a part of a machine is broken, you fix it" mentality. Similarly, there is a growing desire to account for things in genes, without the actual ability to map everything to genetic differences. She didn't exactly say this is the case, but lets take the mentality to the extreme - what does it mean when you say most illnesses can be tracked as expressions of certain regions on DNA, but then you get one that can't be? What does the perception of that illness become?
There were a couple of essays, the names of which, because i read this in audiobook format, I don't know, that I found significantly better than others. There was nothing I didn't like, necessarily - some just felt very honed and felt like they were very clearly coming to a single cohesive idea. Others (like the Cotards syndrome one) felt a bit like it was "this was my experience with it - draw from it what questions you will." While interesting - I found those less engaging.
Three stood out as very good, engaging, and emotional to me.
There was the summer camp volunteer one which I connected with on a variety of levels. For reasons of our own, we've been going back and forth on "should we have kids - shouldn't we". The wavering on our part isn't really for mental health reasons, or as clearly related to mental health as for Esme. Ours are more climate related. But the push of one partner saying yes, while another says no, sometimes being on the same page and feeling like at a cathartic, if sad, position, etc. Was very relatable. On the surface, it's just a very sad, happy, warm, cold story. The complex emotion of relating to a child, to caring for a child, to not needing to care for a child and being free to do so anyway, to wanting to protect a child because it's encountered things similar to you, etc. I think are common enough experiences, but told in such a realistic, and brutal situation to just lay it all out there.
I think that the Yale-indictment was a good read. Nothing too relatable for me. Just a pure "I'm not gonna say it, but you know I could" about how uncaring institutions are for the humans they 'serve'. Well written, well reasoned, well told.
There was an essay about Esmes experience being involuntarily admitted to a mental health facility, and it has come up as an occasional refrain. I think that it is very helpful and valuable to hear someone discuss their experience in a language I understand. Like - I fundamentally think it's a bad idea to involuntarily confine someone, but to hear it described at a non-theoretical, of the pain and trauma you can experience as a result of it - very good to hear and be reminded of.
I'm also not quite how to encapsulate it, but there is also some type of throughline between the autoimmune illness book I recently read by O'Rourke and the discussion on the diagnosis of Esmes illness. In both cases, there is an element of the medical authority trusting the person suffering the illness. In both cases, there is an element of elimination at play (i.e. I've ruled out these other things, so this is what it seems like you have). In both cases - there's an element of ambiguity, and a failing of our current understanding of the human body. In the autoimmune case, we don't have a good understanding of what causes something like ME/CFS, and it attacks multiple organs unpredictably, and can cause seemingly unrelated symptoms, which is at odds with our "human bodys are machines, if a part of a machine is broken, you fix it" mentality. Similarly, there is a growing desire to account for things in genes, without the actual ability to map everything to genetic differences. She didn't exactly say this is the case, but lets take the mentality to the extreme - what does it mean when you say most illnesses can be tracked as expressions of certain regions on DNA, but then you get one that can't be? What does the perception of that illness become?