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An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind
by Fariha Roisin
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.
"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...through vivid writing and striking curiosity, she makes a solid case for making it so. This profoundly enriching survey nails it." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"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." - Kirkus Reviews
"Who Is Wellness For? is a crucial look at the commodification of care that's timely and precise, yet deeply soulful. Treading a fine line between cynic and disciple, Fariha Róisín guides us through modalities of healing with a critical and compassionate eye. Who Is Wellness For? is a plea for empathy, hope, and yes, self-care." - Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter and Stray
"In Who Is Wellness For?, Fariha Róisín offers no quick fixes or easy answers to processing the human condition. Yet, if truth has the power to heal, then Róisín's work is the best kind of healing." - Ashley Ford, author of Somebody's Daughter
This information about Who Is Wellness For? was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Ontario, Canada. She was raised in Sydney, Australia, and is based in Los Angeles, California. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, she is interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. Her work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam and queer identities and has been featured in the New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Vogue. She is the author of the poetry collections How To Cure a Ghost and Survival Takes a Wild Imagination, as well as the novel Like A Bird and the nonfiction book Who Is Wellness For?.
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