Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family by Lindsay Wong

5 reviews

iftheshoef1tz's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

While I don’t think I would have liked Lindsay as a person growing up, I feel such deep empathy for her past self, and clearly she really pities her younger, deeply emotionally stunted childhood self. The complicated love she feels for her mother, despite her mother’s frequent inability to be maternal, was so poignant, and I think that is true for many people and their emotionally abusive parents. The way mental illness was described in this book was upsetting and definitely didn’t pull any punches. I felt particularly terrible for Poh-Poh: off her anti-psychotics, she was hallucinating and unable to function, but from the description of her on medication doesn’t feel much more hopeful. I hope Lindsay is doing and feeling better - her comments throughout the book make it pretty obvious she’s had some therapy and is learning to recover/work around all that trauma. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide attempt, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fatphobia, and Emotional abuse

zee's review against another edition

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. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse and Body shaming

Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, and Racism

siobhanward's review against another edition

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.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Chronic illness

kingsamong's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

2.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Suicide attempt, Emotional abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Child abuse, and Self harm

marilou's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Fatphobia, Emotional abuse, Chronic illness, and Body shaming