'Dazzling ... in her kaleidoscopic essays memoir has been shattered into sliding and
overlapping pieces ... mind-expanding' The New York Times Book Review Esmé Weijun Wang was
officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013 although the hallucinations and
psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at
Yale Stanford and the literary world she would find herself floored by an overwhelming terror
that 'spread like blood' or convinced that she was dead or that her friends were robots or
spiders were eating holes in her brain. What happens when your whole conception of yourself is
turned upside down? When you're aware of what is occurring to you but unable to do anything
about it? Written with immediacy and unflinching honesty this visceral and moving book is
Wang's story as she steps both inside and outside of her condition to bring it to light.
Following her own diagnosis and the many manifestations of schizophrenia in her life she
ranges over everything from how we label mental illness to her own use of fashion and make-up
to present herself as high-functioning from the failures of the higher education system to how
factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease compounded her experiences. Wang's analytical
intelligent eye honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford allows her to balance research
with haunting personal narrative. The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core and
provides unique insight into a condition long misdiagnosed and much misunderstood.
