Darkly funny, steeped in the macabre and grotesque, the book is at once an unflinching portrait of a borderline abusive childhood and a testament to the power that family has to shape us for good or ill.Ĭhronicling Wong’s childhood in suburban Vancouver, The Woo-Woo details the author’s struggles and triumphs – but mostly struggles – as she attempts to make sense of the immediate Wong clan: Confucius Gentleman, the writer’s father, whose cruel humour is mirrored in his daughter’s own Quiet Snow, Wong’s mother, who is terrified of the “woo-woo” (Chinese ghosts that pursue their family under the guise of mental illness) Poh-Poh, Wong’s maternal grandmother, long gone to the ravages of schizophrenia and Beautiful One, Wong’s maternal aunt, who brings the family’s cumulative mental-health struggles to a head during an eight-hour suicide standoff with Vancouver police on the Ironworkers Memorial bridge. There’s something almost addictive about The Woo-Woo, the new memoir from Vancouver writer Lindsay Wong.
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