The woo woo : how I survived ice hockey, drug raids, demons, and my crazy Chinese family / Lindsay Wong.
In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family who blame their woes on ghosts and demons when they should really be on anti-psychotic meds. Lindsay Wong grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic grandmother and a mother who was deeply afraid of the "woo-woo"Chinese ghosts who come to visit in times of personal turmoil. From a young age, she witnessed the woo-woo's sinister effects; when she was six, Lindsay and her mother avoided the dead people haunting their house by hiding out in a mall food court,and on a camping trip, in an effort to rid her daughter of demons, her mother tried to light Lindsay's foot on fire. The eccentricities take a dark turn,however, when her aunt, suffering from a psychotic breakdown, holds the city hostage for eight hours when she threatens to jump off a bridge. And when Lindsay starts to experience symptoms of the woo-woo herself, she wonders whether she will suffer the same fate as her family. At once a witty and touching memoir about the Asian immigrant experience and a harrowing and honest depiction of the vagarie sof mental illness, The Woo-Woo is a gut-wrenching and beguiling manual for surviving family, and oneself.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781551527369 (paperback)
- Physical Description: 315 pages ; 21 cm
- Publisher: Vancouver : Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.
- Copyright: ©2018.
Content descriptions
Awards Note: | BC Book Prizes 2019 - Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize |
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Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Camosun College Library.
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- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
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Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Circulation Modifier | Holdable? | Status | Due Date | Courses |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Interurban Library | RC 512 W65 2018 (Text) | 26040003378649 | Main Collection | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2018 October #1
The story of a volatile Chinese-Canadian childhood in a family beset by the "Woo-Woo" of mental illness.Wong's debut harrowingly portrays a family who "believed that mental illness, or any psychological disturbance, was caused by demonic possession." She opens with her diagnosis of actual neurological impairment, migraine-associated vertigo, after she'd escaped to graduate school, "How nice to know that I was officially un-Woo, I thought, though he was diagnosing me with a lifelong disorder which left me confined to bed and frequently unable to read or write." While appearing affluent, her extended family's emotional entanglements created a chaotic household for Wong and her siblings. The author captures her father's jovial cruelty in bleakly hilarious dialogue, as when he instructs her that "crying will turn you into a zombie like Mommy." Wong's mother also loomed ominously, refusing to receive appropriate treatment despite numerous instances of destructive rageâtrying to light Wong's foot on fire during an ill-starred family trip, noting, "it's not like you need both feet, because you don't move anyway." This hallucinatory upbringing occurred within a caustically portrayed émigré community. From childhood, Wong's ecologically damaged Vancouver suburb, where many Asian neighbors manufactured cannabis or methamphetamine in McMansions, seemed conformist, abrasive, and indifferent to criminal behavior. The author describes most characters with a visceral, grotesque sense of body horror, and she doesn't ignore her own struggles with obesity and other maladies: "Puberty had transformed me into a four-foot-eight, 140-pound goblin." Wong's familial entropy culminated in her favorite aunt's attempted public suicide, on a major bridge during Canada Day, gaining them further notoriety: " âThe cops said I was the best bridge jumper ever,' Beautiful One squealed to me on the phone." Nonetheless, the author moved toward redemption thro u gh understanding, noting of her mother, "she screamed because she was constantly afraid." Wong confidently creates pungent dialogue and environmental detail. There are issues with pacing, in that the grim narrative progression can seem repetitive or meandering, but on the whole, this is a bracing debut. A raw, profane, and funny memoir. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.