Reviews tagging 'Incest'

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

11 reviews

elissam1330's review

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Self harm, Sexual assault, Incest, Suicidal thoughts, and Pedophilia

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

zaraven's review

emotional informative sad slow-paced

2.5

like others wrote, this book is more of a trauma memoir than a critique or analysis of wellness culture, and in it, Roisin locates their own experiences within existing literature on trauma and post traumatic stress rather than critiquing the ways that trauma is conceptualized in the Global North (eg hyper individualized, often located in the mother or parent, focused on recovery, etc). i resonated with some of it, a lot of it felt repetitive, some things were contradictory without much explanation (eg opening with recognizing that forgiveness is not always helpful or necessary - which I appreciated - and then closing by emphasizing the value of forgiveness without sharing much about how they got there or how they hold both), and mostly generalizing the author’s own personal experiences and offering a partial analysis that left me wanting more. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Self harm, Incest, Child abuse, and Colonisation

susheela's review

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Incest, and Physical abuse

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

richelleski's review

challenging hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Self harm, Incest, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Fatphobia and Suicide attempt

readingfortomorrow's review

emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

3.0

Not the examination of wellness culture I was looking for but an okay memoir

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Adult/minor relationship, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Child abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Emotional abuse, and Incest

stillmuseum's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest and Child abuse