Powerful affecting essays on mental illness winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and
a Whiting Award An intimate moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who
still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness The Collected Schizophrenias
cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis and Esmé Weijun Wang
writes not just to her fellow members of the collected schizophrenias but to those who wish to
understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective
disorder Wang discusses the medical community's own disagreement about labels and procedures
for diagnosing those with mental illness and then follows an arc that examines the
manifestations of schizophrenia in her life. In essays that range from using fashion to present
as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis and from the failures of the
higher education system and the dangers of institutionalization to the complexity of
compounding factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease Wang's analytical eye honed as a former lab
researcher at Stanford allows her to balance research with personal narrative. An essay
collection of undeniable power The Collected Schizophrenias dispels misconceptions and
provides insight into a condition long misunderstood.
