The woo-woo: how I survived ice hockey, drug raids, demons, and my crazy Chinese family
Biographies, Familles (biographies), Femmes (biographies), Canadiens (biographies), Auteurs canadiens (documentaires), Succès de librairie (documentaires), Essais et documents primés
Audio avec voix humaine, Braille avec transcription humaine
Résumé
A young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been 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; at the age of six, she found herself living in the food court of her suburban mall, which her mother saw as a safe haven because they could hide there from dead people, and on a camping trip, her mother tried to light Lindsay's foot on fire to rid her of the woo-woo. The eccentricities take a dark turn, however, when her aunt, suffering from a psychotic breakdown, holds the city of Vancouver hostage for eight hours when she threatens to jump off a bridge. And when Lindsay herself starts to experience symptoms of the woo-woo herself, she wonders whether she will suffer the same fate as her family. On one hand a witty and touching memoir about the Asian immigrant experience, and on the other a harrowing and honest depiction of the vagaries of mental illness, 'The Woo-Woo' is a gut-wrenching and beguiling manual for surviving family, and oneself. Bestseller. Canada Reads 2019. Winner of the 2019 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. 2018.