As someone who has been diagnosed in the past with schizoaffective disorder, I was a bit wary on what this book would be about and how detailed it would be. I was slightly afraid that it might be triggering for me, but that was not the case.

I enjoyed the first chunk of essays more than the last few. I'm not a highly spiritual person, to each their own on that fact and some of the essays delved into more spiritual memoir.

I found it interesting though, reading from another person's perspective on schizoaffective disorder/schizophrenia. She delved into topics that were interesting and the points she was trying to make held true, to a fault.

For example:

She talked about one story that really affected me where a family had a schizophrenic son and the sister shot him thirteen times on the side of the road while the mother waited in the car. They talked about being terrorized by this person. The author then went on to talk about other cases where the family was affected by someone with mental health issues or organizations that cater to families and not the individual person with the issues. I am not sure if she was supposed to offer any sort of comfort or solutions, as she did not do so.

In the various essays she also talked about her personal experiences with mental health and how that transformed into various hospital stays, and psychotic episodes.

She also mentions some movies and television scenes that discuss mental health whether negatively or positively. I really enjoyed that.

I was a little frustrated at the end

it seemed to imply that her spiritual journey is what led to her not having symptoms/hallucinations, which good for her to be honest, but not everyone is like that.

Overall this was good but it was hard to say what I officially got out of this essay collection.

Esmé Weijun Wang describes how it is to live with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, through various vignettes where she recalls her lived experience: from the struggle of getting a diagnosis which then doesn't completely cover the symptoms, to finding ways to cope with the most unsettling delusions. 

I found it a great way to learn more about the collected schizophrenic disorders. Wang's writing style is to the point, easy to understand, insightfully personal and at times quite funny. 

I primarily read this book to mark trigger warnings for my partner so they could proceed with this book in an informed way. Of those triggers, there were lots. Going into the book, certain experiences TW

involuntary hospitalization

can't be left out, but it would have been better to have them collected in their own chapter, so the people who don't want to read about them can avoid them.  I appreciate the fact that the author did do this for a topic that was very triggering for me to read, and which I had to skip altogether a fe pages in. That chapter is called "John Doe, Psychosis" and goes into TW

rape and pedophilia

in a graphic way. 

Advice for people looking to read this book but who know it might be triggering: 
TW

If you are looking to read this book, but know the topic of involuntary hospitalization might be triggering, have a friend read through it first and mark the personal accounts before you do so. Throughout the whole book, Wang provides short, but personal and graphic recallings of her own involuntary hospitalizations.

If I have the time and energy I'll experiment with providing a list of trigger warnings for this book, with page numbers, but it's honestly generally not a safe read. I believe it to be in the authors right to write about these topics, of course, but I think it could've been handled more carefully. There is no use of trigger warnings in the book. I would think a core part of the audience interested in this book is suffering with similar experiences this book details, so it's sad that the book didn't make an effort to be a safe read for that audience.

At times I found the stories in the vignettes boring when I didn't see the connection to the overarching theme of the chapter (yet). When I did though, I found this style of writing fresh and engaging, leaving a certain effort to the audience to link the stories together. I think this book is a succes as a memoir, but lacks in (what I am more interested in) scientific explanation. I know schizophrenia is not a well understood disorder, but I left this read with about as much scientific understanding as I went into it. On the other hand, Wang's personal approach was engaging and informative in its own right. 

In conclusion: a good (albeit unsafe) read on one persons experience with schizoaffective disorder. 

This memoir and single case study gave me so much more insight into schizophrenia while also putting a face and a life and a background to the topic. I read the audio book and I love that the author narrated it so I was able to connect more with her and her story. 

I knew a bit about schizophrenia before reading this book, but this has given me so much more insight that I greatly appreciated. I feel that when I go into reading more case studies in the future I will always think of this book when anyone is dealing with or treating someone with schizophrenia. 

This was an enjoyable and informative read. 

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.