Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu

5 reviews

keeganrb's review against another edition

challenging dark medium-paced

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Death of parent, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Racism, Homophobia, and Cancer

Minor: Eating disorder, Adult/minor relationship, and Genocide

pineapplesunshine's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Beautifully written memoir, a fellow biracial third culture kid can relate to.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Genocide, Emotional abuse, Eating disorder, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Colonisation, Classism, Rape, Child abuse, Sexual assault, Self harm, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Cancer, Alcohol, and Death

vaniavela's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

Nadia Owusu was a little girl when her mother left her and her little sister with her father. 

Aftershocks is told in a non-linear narrative, moving forward and backward in time and place, showing us how her life fell apart. You can read each chapter as an individual product, and link them together at the end, without a problem.

The author uses earthquakes as a metaphor for her life, dealing with mental health issues growing up. With her mother's abandonment and her father's death, her world collapsed. 

The writing is also powerful in its own way, portraying racism, colorism, grief and mental illness in a particular way. 

This is a memoir that will move you!

CW:
Graphic: Death of parent, Sexual assault, Grief
Moderate: Racism, Cancer, Homophobia
Minor: Eating disorder, Genocide, Adult/minor relationship 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Cancer, Homophobia, and Racism

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, and Genocide

madelinedalton's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

2.5

If you like memoirs, history, and nonfiction, this will likely be more of a 3.5-4 star book for you. But if you’re like me and you prefer fiction, this is probably not a good fit. I was really intrigued at the beginning, but once we started getting into dense history, I lost my focus. History textbooks in middle and high school killed my love of reading, so I think that’s why. It felt like more of a collection of essays, and the threads of story that she set up at the beginning did not serve as strong through-lines throughout (besides the earthquake metaphors). Overall, it was really hard for me to stay engaged with this book, but maybe that’s not the case for someone who likes this genre more than I do. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Mental illness, War, Death of parent, Sexual assault, and Police brutality

Moderate: Abandonment, Alcohol, and Racism

Minor: Vomit and Eating disorder

jayisreading's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

Aftershocks is an intimate, beautifully written memoir that explores belonging and identity with incredible nuance and grace. I wouldn’t quite call this an experimental approach to memoirs (e.g., In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado), but it doesn’t follow conventions when it comes to memoirs. Owusu opts out of temporality and, instead, takes the reader through her own temporality that you could argue is defined by a seismometer. I really liked how she divided her memoir up into events related to earthquakes (hence, the title). This presentation of her life, culture, and history through vignette-like pieces takes the reader into a liminal space that Owusu often feels she exists in.

Owusu brings such unique perspective to the table as a biracial woman (Ghanaian Armenian) who had a less grounded childhood as a result of her father’s job with the United Nations. In addition, she brings to attention what it’s like dealing with madness, grief, and trauma; deeply contemplating on their connections with each other and to her life. She traces these through her fraught relationships with her mother and stepmother, the death of her father, the various countries she lived in and, of course, her identity.

Owusu invites you into her world in Aftershocks, but in such a way that doesn’t allow you to stare, because these pieces she shares with the readers are precarious. In addition, and I don’t know if this was her intention, but I thought Owusu demonstrated how intersectionality works phenomenally, especially across time and space. There’s a lot to praise— All I can say is to check this memoir out. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Cancer, Racism, Death, Grief, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Violence, Police brutality, Domestic abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Slavery, Drug use, Alcoholism, and Homophobia

Minor: Genocide and Eating disorder