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Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind
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About This Book
The multi-disciplinary artist and author of Like a Bird and How to Cure a Ghost explores the commodification and appropriation of wellness through the lens of social justice, providing resources to help anyone participate in self-care, regardless of race, identity, socioeconomic status or able-bodiedness. Growing up in Australia, Fariha Róisín, a Bangladeshi Muslim, struggled to fit in. In attempts to assimilate, she distanced herself from her South Asian heritage and identity. Years later, living in the United States, she realized that the customs, practices, and even food of her native culture that had once made her different--everything from ashwagandha to prayer--were now being homogenized and marketed for good health, often at a premium by white people to white people. In this thought-provoking book, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, the acclaimed writer and poet explores the way in which the progressive health industry has appropriated and commodified global healing traditions. She reveals how wellness culture has become a luxury good built on the wisdom of Black, brown, and Indigenous people--while ignoring and excluding them. Who Is Wellness For? is divided into four sections, beginning with The Mind, in which Fariha examines the art of meditation and the importance of intuition. In part two, The Body, she investigates the physiology of trauma, detailing her own journey with fatphobia and gender dysmorphia, as well as her own chronic illness. In part three, Self-Care, she argues against the self-care industrial complex but cautious us against abandoning care completely and offers practical advice. She ends with Justice, arguing that if we truly want to be well, we must be invested in everyone's well being and shift toward nurturance culture. Deeply intimate and revelatory, Who Is Wellness For? forces us to confront the imbalance in health and healing and carves a path towards self-care that is inclusionary for all.
Reviews
"An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind, tracks the author's 'own personal experience of needing wellness,' while simultaneously examining the wellness industrial complex and its failures...Róisín identifies as a queer Bangladeshi Muslim, part of a new generation of Black and Brown women of color writers who — following in the tradition of Black feminist poet-scholar-activists such as Audre Lorde, June Jordan and bell hooks (all of whom Róisín names as heroes) — take up themes of trauma and identity through a social justice lens...For Róisín, healing and self-discovery are closely tied to collective reckonings with lived legacies of racism and colonialism, as well as sexism and homophobia."
"An exploration of the ways in which the wellness industry simultaneously commoditizes non-White cultures and renders services inaccessible to marginalized peoples...Ultimately, Róisín calls for a more sustainable, equitable approach to healing...Only occasionally dense, the author's prose is engaging, and she delves into her past with vulnerability and self-compassion...The book is deeply researched and laudably includes the work of a variety of Black and Indigenous scholars to make a unique and relevant case for the need for greater accessibility to healing...A vulnerable, intensely trenchant analysis of the ways capitalism denies wellness for so many around the world."
"In this blistering blend of memoir and cultural criticism, novelist Róisín traces her path to healing as an abuse survivor and takes an unsparing look at the appropriation and corruption of Eastern spiritual practices for Western audiences...Róisín's childhood was marred by her mother's unpredictable and violent behavior, and as an adult, those painful memories long went unprocessed...Her healing process, she writes, involved understanding intergenerational trauma and recognizing how it has a physical effect on one's body, and how interconnected the mind and the body are...Alongside her personal story, Róisín explains how the 'wellness industrial complex' works as 'a modern arm of imperialism' as 'whiteness and capital have..."
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