Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - The Collected Schizophrenias

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

cloudcoveronvenus's review

Go to review page

I think that Wang has a lot to contribute towards discussions of mental health stigma. However, I found this collection to be too lacking in nuance to contribute deeply to this discussion outside of the realm of personal experience. At the same time that Wang describes her harmful experiences with hospitalization in detail, she speaks about other neurodivergent people- particularly those with developmental disabilities- in a way that makes me wonder if she so much as read a wikipedia article about them. (Highlights: barely investigating the validity of functioning labels, and my near-final straw, "People write about the so-called comfort of being insane in the same way they cavalierly refer to the happy ease of being developmentally disabled," (127)." No, there is no anaylsis of this idea, so while it may be offered critically it's still too ambiguous. Way to punch down.) As an autistic person myself, I honestly couldn't stand to read a book that treats those like me with such a lack of depth and compassion, so I had to put it down.

Content Warnings

sidneyreads_'s review

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

4.5

Content Warnings

bardic_llama's review

Go to review page

emotional informative medium-paced

3.0

Content Warnings

anovelbeauty's review

Go to review page

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Book TW: mental illness, discussions on various aspects of psychosis, chronic illness, discussion of suicide/self-harm/harm to others, discussion of rape/abuse/CP, involuntary hospitalisation and restraint

Given my own internal rules about rating anthologies/poetry collections/etc. I probably shouldn’t be giving this a star rating. However, I wanted to give you a visual depiction of how much I loved this book so you would read the review and hopefully /the book/.
I think it’s important for everyone to read about the experiences of people who have gone through life differently than them, but it’s /imperative/ for those who are entering/in service and helping professions. As someone in training to work in the mental health field, I cannot limit myself to descriptions of mental illnesses in textbooks or a list of symptoms in the DSM if I hope to be a fully rounded clinician. It is so important to read first-hand accounts, to remind ourselves of the humanity and complexity of mental health and illness. The way Wang weaves her essays is not only beautiful in a purely literary sense, but it is beautiful because it is so human, so connective. She draws you into her world and shows you, as much as is possible, what it is like to exist in tandem with schizoaffective disorder, part of the collected schizophrenias. This is not, however, an entirely bleak book. There is hope throughput and Wang weaves humor and snark even into the hardest of moments. That being said, there are times where the book is hard to read or made me cry for her suffering. Regardless of what I felt at any given part of the book, it was continually emotional and impactful. While I would recommend this book to anyone, I think it is absolutely a must read for anyone in healthcare or public service. Build your understanding and empathy; read this book. Digest it slowly. Ponder it. Underline, annotate, and dogear if that’s your thing, just don’t ignore its value. Esmé Weijun Wang has laid her soul and her sufferings in this series of essays and it’s the least we can do to give her words the collective space they deserve in our minds (and bookshelves).

Content Warnings

More...