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. 

The essays are okay, but they are psuedo-intellectual at times. wangs persistent provlem is her sheer unlikeability - there is absolutely no charisma. She dabbles in interesting topics, but those stories give way to her less than ideal anecdotes.
Quoting solsnit and sontag she makes sure the reader knows what she is trying to accomplish, but placing herself in their company does her a great disservice.

Again, this book is very much like a memoir and so I choose to leave it un-rated, but I was fascinated by Wang’s experiences and really appreciated that she was willing to share them so publicly as to write them in a book.  I do my best not to be ableist, but I know I have work to do, and that includes ableism around psychosis and the schizophrenias.  Being invited into the mind of someone with schizoaffective disorder was an incredible opportunity for learning and growth.

This is a tough one to try and rate. I thoroughly enjoyed this book but did recoil at the pseudoscience and mysticism in last 20% or so. I was raised in a family that attempted to treat my childhood and adolescent illness with a wide range of expensive pseudoscientific remedies, and while I don't deny that Wang seems to gain grounding and comfort from the experience, I struggle to ascribe good faith motives to the practitioners treating her chronic health issues with similar costly means. I take issue with the author on many a point, but still found her perspective fascinating and her writing compelling. 

I had heard only good things about this collection so I was pretty excited for it, but from the beginning, I had a bad feeling. There's an uncomfortable combination of internalized ableism and isolation/alienation from larger disability community and politics, where I felt very on edge as a reader who identifies as disabled and Mad.

The first big, definable red flag was an essay that makes excuses for why a mother and sister brutally killed their schizophrenic son/brother, with an emphasis on their fatigue and not the inherent worth of their son/brother even if he never "recovered," and with no larger history or analysis of disability-related filicide (which, check out this link to Disability Day of Mourning information if you've never heard of this before, CW for death, grief, and ableism: https://disability-memorial.org/).

But I finally decided to DNF after "The Choice of Children," which features a heavy and uninspected emphasis on functional labels (which have so many issues), unnecessary and repeated use of the R slur, and an uncomfortable argument on why she doesn't want to have children to potentially pass genetic disability onto (which, it feels like eugenics should be discussed here, somehow? Like the history and current landscape of eugenics absolutely affects why some disabled people, especially those alienated from community and politics, don't want to birth potentially disabled children. And that doesn't automatically mean you should have children, that there aren't also valid reasons to not want to birth or raise children, but like... you cannot discuss this phenomenon independently of eugenics and if you're acting like you are it's probably just uncritically replicating neoeugenic logic).