Esmé Weijun Wang, "The Collected Schizophrenias"

Esmé Weijun Wang discusses her book, "The Collected Schizophrenias", at Politics and Prose.
Drawing on her personal experience as both a onetime lab researcher at Stanford and a person diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder, Wang examines how mental illness is perceived by the medical community, by society, and by patients themselves. Writing with the immediacy and honesty that earned her a spot as one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelist sin 2017, Wang discusses doctors’ disagreements about diagnosing mental illness, describes her work at a camp for bipolar children, recounts a harrowing stay in a mental hospital, and reflects on how her condition could be an asset rather than a burden. Together these powerful essays dispel myths about mental illness even as they illuminate the challenges of living with one.
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Produced by Tom Warren