A Fish Growing Lungs: Essays

by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn

At age 18 Alysia Sawchyn was diagnosed with bipolar I. Seven years later she learned she had been misdiagnosed. A Fish Growing Lungs takes the form of linked essays that reflect on Sawchyn's diagnosis and its unraveling, the process of withdrawal and recovery, and the search for identity as she emerges from a difficult past into a cautiously hopeful present.

Genres: Memoir, Essays, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Biography Memoir

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 9, 2020

Reviews

[Alex Zaky · Rating 5 out of 5]

“So much of art and life is a matter of perspective and focus; to create a happy ending is often to look away at the right moment. Today I choose to linger here, no matter that it will not last.”

I’ve thought a lot about this review. I know what I want to say, and also know it won’t be enough or just right.

I think it’s common to find books where you relate to the characters and extremely rare when you feel that what’s being said are the exact words you want to say, but don’t know how. This book is the latter.

For personal categorization: this book goes on my shelf of books that changed my life.

This book is truthful. Not honest, honest sounds fake. The book is truthful, regardless of if what happens is what actually did or not, it’s how it was, how it was felt, and there is a beautiful, poetic, truthfulness to that.

I did not want it to end. I put off reading the last essay because I didn’t want it to be over.

Raw also seems like the wrong word. But I guess it’s true. Not raw in the way that it will leave you crying, but raw in the humanness of it. Raw in the same way that it was true. In the same way where I found the things I wanted to say through another’s words. That kind of raw.

If you ever get the opportunity to read... do it. You won’t regret it.

[Andrea Rothman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw, beautiful, and honest to the core. A taut and uncompromising exploration of addiction and one young woman’s quest to find herself after a mental illness misdiagnosis that nearly ruins her life. The story is told in different time lines through a series of witty and insightful essays whose philosophical depth makes their themes feel at once universal and necessary. In her visceral tale of misdiagnosis and addiction, Sawchyn is not only talking about herself, but about every one of us: “If I’ve learned anything from my misdiagnosis, it’s that our understanding of reality (because that’s all that we have, really, our understanding of it, rather than the thing itself) is constantly in flux and any stasis is either illusion or temporary.” Highly recommend!

[Daniela Godreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adored this collection of short stories (does contain multiple TWs)

also! features one of my favorite places in Tampa, The Castle ❤️

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Alysia's writing was really pretty and fun to read. I couldn't really relate to a lot of her essays, but that didn't stop my enjoyment of them! It's always fun to read about someone else's lived experiences.

[Ariel Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection!

[Isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't normally gravitate towards essays/memoirs, but I loved this book. The writing was beautiful and painful, but also really accessible. I didn't feel like I had to struggle to understand what was being conveyed, but it was still beautifully written. Very glad I read this.

[Sarita · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED LOVED LOVED this collection of essays by a talented writer. If you are interested in the power of hermit crab essays this is your book. I'm adding this book to my collection of craft essays and mental illness. There are powerful essays in this debut! Inheritance, Wellness Index and Withdrawal were my favorites. If you are a fan of Esme Wang's The Collected Schizophrenia and Bassey Ikpi's I'm Telling the Truth But I'm Lying you will love this collection. There are essays on complicated identity, familial ties and secrets, and most importantly mental illness. I saw my family and myself in this book. Grateful for the Rumpus Book Club for sending me an early copy. Look forward to joining the slack conversation tonight with Alysia. This is one of the best essay collections I read this year. Highly recommend it.

[çağla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, I did not like these essays.

The book had a great potential with the topic it says it deals with - the first essay ‘apology’ gave me something to think about over human nature, misdiagnosis, and the relation between being responsible over one’s actions before and after a misdiagnosed mental disorder. what does this situation tell to one’s conscience?

However, as I continued reading, these essays became less and less developed and I could not connect to the author in any way. I felt like I was reading ramblings from a diary, and things meant to be understood by the author and those close to her.

Though I was excited at the start of the book, I did not get anything from it.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Disclosure: The author is a friend, but I would gush over this debut collection regardless.] My goodness, is it good. The raw honesty and the crackling and luminous prose in these essays tell a tale of becoming (and overcoming) that will stay with me for a long time. Here is one of many wonderful lines: “To look and see myself, to be unafraid and to work toward something more gentle and true—this is my test.” Every essay resonates, but I was particularly struck by “Wellness Index,” “Deep Sea Creatures,” and the uniquely structured “Withdrawal” (represented as a timeline flowchart of sorts).

[McKenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thoughtful and beautifully crafted. Challenges familiar tropes surrounding addiction and mental illness in a way that isn't pretentious or forced. The writing is raw, creative, darkly funny at times, and honest. The best case scenario for a work of creative nonfiction, if you ask me.

People who live with mental illness, and those without, will get something from this book. This book is for anyone who has felt out of place in the world, has lived the shuffle from one medication to the next, has struggled to identify who they are as a person, or has grappled with how to be a person in the world after spending time institutionalized (a more niche crowd, I know). It's for people who know these people. The ones who haven't always chosen survival, but know it painfully and intimately well.

"I am grateful, though it has taken me years to unearth the feeling from beneath the garbage. I'm talking about the real shit here, not the bullshit we say when we're scared and locked up so the counselors and doctors will leave us alone. I'm talking about the gratitude that comes after the suffering, after its attendant bitterness and the remorse. The gratitude that lets us look and see." - Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn, "unsent," (p.133)

Content warning: drug addiction, eating disorders, mental illness, institutionalization (psych), self harm, loss.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll admit this collection's focus on misdiagnosis worried me a little when I picked it up. Without context, or with the wrong context, it had the potential to make harmful half-criticisms of medicalized mental health. With the right context, it had the potential to accurately unravel the limitations of "diagnosis," especially around gender and social(ized) expectations of behavior. Thankfully, it offered much more of the latter. Sawchyn's writing is so tight and compelling sentence-to-sentence, and some of her points really echo. Though I feel like I would've liked this even more in late high school, when I was focused on mental health and belongingness/performativity of emotions in the world, before I heard of disability justice at all, I still liked it quite a bit, and there's no other collection exactly like it.

[Rebecca H.]

A Fish Growing Lungs is a linked essay collection about Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn’s diagnosis of Bipolar I at 18 and her later realization that this diagnosis was a mistake. Sawchyn writes about her experiences with mental illness and drug use. She explores relationships with doctors, struggles with medications, and complicated inheritances from both sides of her family. She also writes about her slow movement toward a more stable place. The essays are often inventive in form, searching for new ways to describe inner states. Their range of tones and subjects—she also writes about music and friendship among other things—keep the book lively and varied. This is a powerful, nuanced, honest take on struggle and growth.

https://bookriot.com/summer-indie-pre...

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just wow. I’m in college and I had to read this book for a literature class, and Sawchyn herself came in for an interview with my class! She is such a lovely, down to earth person, and this book is going on my shelf with some of my favorite I’ve ever read. It’s honest in a way that doesn’t feel preachy, just a genuine person writing on her experiences. I won’t say too much about what’s in it, but do beware of discussion of eating disorders and other mental health topics. This was a lovely book, great formatting, great cover art, great contents. All in all, I’d give it six stars if I could

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed these essays a good deal. A whole smorgasbord of under-discussed topics here-bipolar disorder, eating disorders, cutting, rehab, improper/over-mediating, drug use, etc. Definitely a writing-as-personal-healing book. I liked the inclusion of childhood photos in a later essay. Esp re: eating disorder stuff, though: it felt like she's really still working through things. Made it a little painful to read, like not sure wherrrrre exactly the semi-romanticization of under-eating was going. Yes, it's tragic and messed up; no it's not pretty (even if family members give affirmation for weight loss). Can things like eating disorders be aestheticized, then? Idk.

[Ann Lewinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alysia Sawchyn’s odyssey through addiction and recovery—with debatable help from psychopharmacology—is chronicled in finely wrought, intellectually rigorous and emotionally devastating essays that take us through mental hospitals and squats, ashrams and grad school. It’s Sawchyn’s belief that she was misdiagnosed as bipolar 1—because when she went off her medication after seven years she felt fine—but I might point out that perhaps the DSM is wrong (as it has so many times before), and bipolar is not a lifetime diagnosis. But what matters is that she survived to give us this riveting debut.

[Laura Zam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FISH GROWING LUNGS is an incredible book about a woman's inspirational journey to wholeness. The book poetic and colloquial at the same time. I loved the linked essays, how they kept providing layers of meaning and insight. The prose is simply gorgeous. What I responded to most, however, was the courage and fighting spirit of the protagonist who was given a false diagnosis, and had to find her way to health. If you're looking for a gorgeous, inspiring read, this is it!

[Darcy Gabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a number of mediocre memoirs recently- this isn’t it. This is refreshingly honest, but punchy and concise. This is incredibly well written, almost like poetry, and every character came alive for me (though I couldn’t personally related to any of them). It’s a fast and quick read, but it’s dense, covering a wide range of difficult topics that make humans “human.”

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sawchyn was misdiagnosed with bipolar 1 when she was 18, and these terrific essays plot the the time after the diagnosis and the seven years that followed when she was medicated. Harrowing, visceral and finely crafted, I plowed through this book in two days. An illuminating and finely wrought collection.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short but well-written book of essays centered around mental health, specifically an incorrect diagnosis of Bipolar I. She certainly does have other issues, having struggled with cocaine addiction, anorexia, and cutting herself, but the bipolar diagnosis turned out to be inaccurate, which was confirmed after a long process of tapering off medication.

[Christine Quiampang Rader · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Autumn in Shenandoah National Park is the kind of sucker-punch scenery on which this country was founded. From mountaintops, the world undulates outward in smaller crests and hills like an untidy blanket.”

[Rebecca]

Of course, I have not yet ascended beyond my resentments, and my taste in music hasn’t much improved. But I am lucky to have survived growing up.

Extended cocaine use notwithstanding—because perhaps I was too preoccupied with projecting my own adolescent pathologies onto the text to have anticipated that, no matter the foreshadowing…—I do not think much can be said that would not reveal too much.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is well done. The essays are focused while still having the freedom to roam a little. They are tightly written and urgent. It’s a good read.

[Rachel Tiebauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty awesome. Really identified with the author’s perspective and experiences. It also helps that she’s amazingly talented. I look forward to reading more by her.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Orderly account of the chaos of addiction and life.

[Jennifer Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gritty look at mental illness so beautifully written that I couldn't put it down.

[rebeca ravara · Rating 4 out of 5]

scarily relatable.

[Emma Hare]

A very emotional collection of memoir essays. Emotional rollercoaster. Would definitely recommend.

[Olivia Russo · Rating 5 out of 5]

love love love the variety in structure of the essays

[Emma McCoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful essays that feel poignant and specific. I feel they sometimes occasionally delve too much into the introspective, but that’s a matter of taste. These do good work with form.

[Brandi Spering · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been extremely drawn to essays lately, but the main reason I gravitated toward A Fish Growing Lungs, was because of the subject matter and the honesty it entailed. I find it easy to relate to the concept of self discovery, as most do, but I couldn’t imagine the toll of a misdiagnosis, especially pertaining to mental health. It was clear before reading, that there would be an ache felt throughout the book, as well as a rawness. However, as I read, I noticed the breeze in which it flows, the care knitted through each section, each paragraph. It is raw in the aspect of vulnerability, and incredibly strong through its presentation and process. A Fish Growing Lungs is insightful, shedding light on the faults in the healthcare system surrounding mental health, particularly for women of color. It is one of the best books I have ever read.