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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.
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This book!
The author is so interesting.
She even mentions one of my favorite books, women who run with the wolves by clarissa pinkola estes. (I remember exactly who recommended it to me and what life was like when i read it!) She also quotes Ivan illich, gabor maté, and more.
It s a very interesting book. A bit like reading someone’s diary. I didnt learn a lot of new things regarding wellness but i learned a lot about the author and her view on the wellness industry. The book is personal and very honest. she shares her traumas and it is political too. It s just so well put together. I recommend it. It’s amazing to find authors who manage to word out everything so…articulately. This book s a bit heavy at times, but easy to digest if ones takes time reading it.
Some excerpts:
“The suggestion that the efficacy of ancient wellness modalities is purely anecdotal, without considering the vast histories—thousands and millennia longer than “Western thought”—that have brought us this information is a classic tactic of Western science. To mystify without engagement is a silencing tactic. It is also an imperial invention to esteem one source of knowledge over the other. To present an argument about something as expansive, illustrious, and profound as the world of wellness is simply a way to delegitimize one’s own argument by showing an archaic diligence to speak loudly to assert power. ”
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“they’ve weaponized critique as a way to thwart all ideas outside their own purview. Never questioning what encourages them to insinuate that intellectual rigor can only be found in their own limited ideas of the world, and that nothing else requires their focus or attention. ”
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Who Is Wellness For? By Fariha Roisin