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Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'
The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family by Lindsay Wong
3 reviews
zee's review
challenging
dark
medium-paced
3.5
Dark, and bitingly witty, Wong regales us with her horrifically abusive experience growing up in a disturbingly undiagnosed mentally unwell family. It is a truly chaotic experience that almost feels like fiction except that it's too caustic and surreal to be made up. The good news is, Wong survives and manages to gain a solid understanding of how wild and unhealthy her experiences were. However as a book it's very heavy, flippant, and tough to read with the cruel humour.
Graphic: Body shaming and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Suicide attempt, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
siobhanward's review
emotional
slow-paced
3.0
I struggle to rate memoirs low, because after all this is someone's account of their life, but this was just not a great read. It felt very much like Wong should have been describing the contents of this book to a therapist, rather than to an audience. Despite how clearly she remembers everything in the book, she seems very disconnected from all of it, which makes it feel like a total outsider telling the story, rather than someone in the middle of everything.
This made for a book that felt like a work of fiction, rather than a memoir. I'm not questioning the validity of the story at all, but Wong's disconnect from these events made it seem as though she has not fully processed things and really should be getting the help she needs (and deserves), rather than turning her story into a memoir. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to learn from this, other than that untreated mental illness is traumatizing for the people around you and absolutely changes the outcome of your life, none of which is a revelation.
This made for a book that felt like a work of fiction, rather than a memoir. I'm not questioning the validity of the story at all, but Wong's disconnect from these events made it seem as though she has not fully processed things and really should be getting the help she needs (and deserves), rather than turning her story into a memoir. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to learn from this, other than that untreated mental illness is traumatizing for the people around you and absolutely changes the outcome of your life, none of which is a revelation.
Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Chronic illness
marilou's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
Graphic: Body shaming, Chronic illness, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Mental illness, and Suicide attempt
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