Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind by Fariha Róisín

6 reviews

gizellereads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Body shaming, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Domestic abuse, Medical content, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Abandonment, Medical trauma, Incest, and Chronic illness

Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Fatphobia, and Abortion

aubreystrawberry's review

More of a trauma memoir with occasional critiques of the overall wellness industrial complex- not really what i’m looking for rn. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Sexual assault, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Self harm, Sexual violence, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Chronic illness, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, and Suicidal thoughts

jkamler's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

1.0

I honestly struggled to get through this book and thought about giving up on it several times. Near the end of the book I just longed for it to be over already. 
As others have said, the book does not really examine wellness culture through a sociological lens, but is mostly a memoir of the author’s childhood abuse and pretty broad spiritual claims and generalizations. I hate to even admit this but I also found the author to be a little obsessed with suffering and overindulging in a victim mentality. I really wanted to enjoy this book because I believe in centering voices of color and I was invested in the criticism of wellness culture, but I just resented the experience the entire time. I pushed through to the end but honestly should have just called it quits. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Incest, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Fatphobia, Genocide, Body shaming, and Abandonment

yaoipaddle's review

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

 This book is different than expected, but I am still pleasantly surprised for the most part. I expected this book to be strictly about wellness culture and not include much of the author's life, but this book has a lot of the author's personal life in it. It discusses not only wellness in terms of yoga and meditation like I expected, but also spirituality, environment, family, etc.

I'm white and I think other white people would really gain a lot reading this. I quite like a lot of the connections drawn between capitalism, white supremacy, and wellness culture as it exists in most of the world today. If you think reading something like this would make you uncomfortable as a white person, then I REALLY think you need to read this.

You can tell that writing this book brought a lot of comfort to the author, so good for her!

One of my main dislikes from this book is the overuse of references/quotes. I am not exaggerating when I say almost every single page quotes another work/person. Often times there is multiple ones. I remember one occasion when a third of the page was taken up by a massive quote. This all makes the book more clunky to read and exhausting. I find that for a lot of the quotes the author does not integrate it well to her writing. Very often I felt like I was reading a long research paper's literature review. This does not make it a smooth or fast read.

One final thank you I want to give the author is that for the first time in my life I found someone actual reference the pain the USA & NATO inflicted on my home country. I often felt like we were overseen/invisible in that sense. So thank you thank you thank you! (Not really related to the book but it still meant a lot to me so I am putting it here.) 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Classism, Chronic illness, Bullying, Pedophilia, Islamophobia, Body shaming, Cursing, Child abuse, Sexual content, Rape, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Cultural appropriation, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, War, Xenophobia, Violence, Mental illness, Misogyny, Incest, Grief, Gaslighting, Dysphoria, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Abortion

Minor: Transphobia

werew0rm's review

challenging emotional slow-paced

3.0

This challenged a lot of my perspectives and I found much of this very interesting, but I didn’t get what I was expecting out of it and this ventured too far into spiritual for me. Interesting but not for me. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, Colonisation, Chronic illness, Dysphoria, and Sexual assault

ecn's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

My heart was cracked open and I felt so seen in some aspects of the author’s relationship to her mother. I now need to read all of her previous work

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Chronic illness, Violence, Physical abuse, Misogyny, Body shaming, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Child abuse, Abandonment, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Toxic relationship, Dysphoria, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, and Sexism