“Necessary and illuminating. In these elegant essays, Esmé Weijun Wang insightfully dissects the many false stories we tell ourselves about mental and physical illness while investigating her own diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. The Collected Schizophrenias is a brilliant guide to the complexities of thinking about illness, and mental illness in particular. It will bring hope to others searching to understand their own diagnoses, and the lyric precision of her writing is a solace and pleasure in its own right.”
—Meghan O’Rourke
“The Collected Schizophrenias is a masterful braiding of the achingly personal and the incisively researched. With graceful, penetrative intelligence and a strong dose of wit, Esmé Weijun Wang creates a container that can hold the complexities and contradictions of her diagnosis, while addressing the larger issue of how our society marginalizes its mentally ill population. This book is a vital, illuminating window onto the world we all already live in, but find all too easy to ignore.”
—Alexandra Kleeman
“Through the wide-angle lens of her own life, Esmé Weijun Wang comprehensively takes in the science, literature, art, institutions, spiritualism, and popular myths of schizophrenia, fashioning a tableau of intense clarity and contrast. You won’t find any pity-baiting, sensationalism, or false positivity here; Wang is so candidly aware that I’d trust her over my own diary.”
—Tony Tulathimutte
“In this remarkable, riveting collection of essays, Esmé Weijun Wang offers us an all-access pass to her beautiful, unquiet mind in what can only be described as an act of profound generosity. Rarely has a book about living with mental illness felt so immediate, raw, and powerful.”
—Dani Shapiro
“This mesmerizing collection of essays has achieved the rarest of rarities—a meaningful and expansive language for a subject that has been long bound by both deep revulsion and intense fascination. Brimming with poetry, inquisition, and a big pulsing heart.”
—Jenny Zhang
“The Collected Schizophrenias is at once generous and brilliantly nuanced, rigorous and bold. It had me rethinking what it is to be well or ill, and what it means to be in a body—to be, that is, alive. A powerful, extraordinary book.”
—R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries