This was an excellent essay collection about the author's experience of schizoaffective and bipolar disorders. She talks about her experience of it, parts of the process getting diagnoses, dealing with ableism in various contexts, spirituality, media, and more. Not only does it show the mind of the author in some ways, it says a lot about how people with these less socially acceptable symptoms and disorders are treated.

The only real drawback of this was some of the discussion around autism in one of the essays. It felt very dated and I'm not sure how to feel about some of the discussion around functioning labels. So that is why I didn't give it a full 5 stars. The rest of the collection was really solid and very interesting. 

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).