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Out of the Blue
At the height of her career in journalism, Jan Wong's world came crashing down. A story she wrote on a school shooting sparked a violent backlash, including death threats. Her newspaper failed to stand by her, and for the first time in her life she spiraled into clinical depression. She found herself unable to write, but the paper's management thought she was feigning illness, and fired her. Her insurer rejected her claim of depression, and her publisher refused to publish this book.Out of the Blue is a memoir unlike any other. It is the surreal, wrenching, sometimes hilarious, and ultimately triumphant story of one woman's struggle to come to terms with depression.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published May 5, 2012
13 people are currently reading
351 people want to read
About the author
Jan Wong
12 books70 followersJan Wong was the much-acclaimed Beijing correspondent for The Globe and Mail from 1988 to 1994. She is a graduate of McGill University, Beijing University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is the recipient of a (US) George Polk Award, the New England Women’s Press Association Newswoman of the Year Award, the (Canadian) National Newspaper Award and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Silver Medal, among other honours for her reporting. Wong has also written for The New York Times, The Gazette in Montreal, The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal.
Her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China. It has been translated into Swedish, Finnish, Dutch and Japanese, and optioned for a feature film.
Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian, born and raised in Montreal. She first went to China in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution as one of only two Westerners permitted to enrol at Beijing University. There, she renounced rock music, wielded a pneumatic drill at a factory and hauled pig manure in the paddy fields. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War in China. During those six years in China, she learned fluent Mandarin and earned a degree in Chinese history.
From 1988 to 1994, Jan Wong returned as China correspondent for The Globe and Mail. In reporting on the tumultuous new era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping, she reacquainted herself with old friends and enemies from her radical past. In 1989, she dodged bullets in Tiananmen Square, fought off a kidnapping attempt and caught the Chinese police red-handed driving her stolen Toyota as a squad car. (They gave it back.)
She returned to China in 1999 to make a documentary and to research her second book, Jan Wong’s China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent. It tells the story of China’s headlong rush to capitalism and offers fresh insight into a country that is forever changing.
Jan Wong lives with her husband and two sons in Toronto where she is a reporter at The Globe and Mail. The best of her weekly celebrity-interview columns, “Lunch With,” which ran for five years, have been published in a book of the same name.
[From Random House's Jan Wong Author Spotlight]
Her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China. It has been translated into Swedish, Finnish, Dutch and Japanese, and optioned for a feature film.
Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian, born and raised in Montreal. She first went to China in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution as one of only two Westerners permitted to enrol at Beijing University. There, she renounced rock music, wielded a pneumatic drill at a factory and hauled pig manure in the paddy fields. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War in China. During those six years in China, she learned fluent Mandarin and earned a degree in Chinese history.
From 1988 to 1994, Jan Wong returned as China correspondent for The Globe and Mail. In reporting on the tumultuous new era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping, she reacquainted herself with old friends and enemies from her radical past. In 1989, she dodged bullets in Tiananmen Square, fought off a kidnapping attempt and caught the Chinese police red-handed driving her stolen Toyota as a squad car. (They gave it back.)
She returned to China in 1999 to make a documentary and to research her second book, Jan Wong’s China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent. It tells the story of China’s headlong rush to capitalism and offers fresh insight into a country that is forever changing.
Jan Wong lives with her husband and two sons in Toronto where she is a reporter at The Globe and Mail. The best of her weekly celebrity-interview columns, “Lunch With,” which ran for five years, have been published in a book of the same name.
[From Random House's Jan Wong Author Spotlight]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
May 18, 2012
Jan Wong tells her story about her spiral into a major depression. She delves into her clinical depression and what it did to her and her family and she also tells about how her employer and their insurance company denied her benefits and denied her dignity while she was sick. She names names and tells it just like it is. This is a brave memoir that shows the good, the bad and the ugly of mental illness and also informs the reader about how so many Canadians suffer every year. She was lucky to have the resources and support to fight the big wigs who would not accept that she was sick and needed their support, not their orders for her to return to work and then relapse. Her story is well told and you really get an inside view of what depression can do to you. I was mortified that she had to go through the fight she did, but am glad she would not accept a gag order by Manulife, Globe and Mail and then finally Doubleday. This is a book worth reading, and a book worth telling everyone you know to buy and read. Forced to self publish this book, she tells a story that needs to be told. Awareness of mental illness is critical in stopping the stigma that exists. Jan Wong tells it like it is and holds no punches. A great read.
June 3, 2012
Jan Wong is a remarkable journalist and writer, with a sharp-edged style and an eye for detail, who has provided skilled insights from China and dramatic perspectives on the different dimensions of life in Toronto. As she says of herself, she has always been a "tough cookie," who made her work her life, and believed in her employer, the Globe and Mail.
Then an article she wrote on the 2007 Dawson College killings in Montreal, fully vetted by her editors, spurred high-profile criticism, vicious mail, a serious death threat, and her newspaper publicly renouncing the piece she had written (it had "analysis" in it, the Globe and Mail said, and should have stuck to news -- even though her editors had requested the analysis and praised her for it before printing the article.) Perhaps already stressed by the death of her mother and her elderly father's unhappiness, Jan Wong was hit very hard by this betrayal and pushed into what became a long and agonizing depression, diagnosed by her own doctor and ultimately treated for several years by an expert Toronto-based psychiatrist who becomes one of a few heroes in this searing memoir of workplace abuse, mental illness and gradual recovery.
This is a magnificent book on so many levels.
In a world where serious depression is becoming a much more common yet still hidden malady, Jan Wong provides a painfully courageous and detailed description of how she suffered, and the severe costs borne by her and her family. To write with such harsh honesty about the devastation she felt and the despair that overwhelmed her, the breakdown in her sense of self-confidence and her intense emotional instability, must take the rarest of commitments to truth. The result is a remarkable communication of understanding and empathy with respect to depression -- combined with a commentary on the illness from a whole range of thoughtful sources. The discussion of how her psychiatric treatments helped her longterm recovery is also deeply insightful.
On a second level, this book is a striking critique of the changing corporate culture and ethos that would lead a once well-regarded company to treat a valued, prize-winning employee in such a brutal and thoughtless way -- claiming that she was not ill, despite clear medical testimony to the contrary, then firing her. Jan Wong sees this as reflecting a new harsher form of "lean and mean" capitalism that, inter alia, threatens the ongoing integrity of journalism as truth-seeking. Perhaps here the author is less perceptive. The General Motors and Fords of the industrial era were equally brutal with their employees -- laying off thousands at will and firing people for unionization efforts -- until strong unions provided some resistance. Now that information and knowledge are becoming the heart of corporate accumulation efforts it is not surprising that information employees are being treated in equally heartless ways. So it is journalism that is changing from a craft in local communities to wage labour in giant conglomerates. Jan Wong is an extreme victim of such change, but so are all those being fired by Postmedia as it moves to produce its newspaper for Ottawa (for instance) from Hamilton hundreds of miles away, or by CTV as it cuts back.
Finally, though, Jan Wong's book is also a tribute to family. How, in the end, is she able to endure and ultimately fight back? Her sister, Gigi, despite past quarrels, "came to my rescue." Her husband, Norman, was there for her throughout the ordeal, despite the disregard for him that she sometimes showed. Her two teen-age children showed a heroic level of self-sufficiency and support for her. Her father never wavered, despite the business pressures her writing may have set off against him. This is in many ways the most inspiring part of this book.
This book is not in the end a journal of despair, though it is heart-rending on the subject of depression. This is a memoir of courage, and a story of resistance in a world that is growing more vicious. Jan Wong has always written with powerful clarity. She continues to do so, even in recounting how her own life became so clouded and corroded.
Then an article she wrote on the 2007 Dawson College killings in Montreal, fully vetted by her editors, spurred high-profile criticism, vicious mail, a serious death threat, and her newspaper publicly renouncing the piece she had written (it had "analysis" in it, the Globe and Mail said, and should have stuck to news -- even though her editors had requested the analysis and praised her for it before printing the article.) Perhaps already stressed by the death of her mother and her elderly father's unhappiness, Jan Wong was hit very hard by this betrayal and pushed into what became a long and agonizing depression, diagnosed by her own doctor and ultimately treated for several years by an expert Toronto-based psychiatrist who becomes one of a few heroes in this searing memoir of workplace abuse, mental illness and gradual recovery.
This is a magnificent book on so many levels.
In a world where serious depression is becoming a much more common yet still hidden malady, Jan Wong provides a painfully courageous and detailed description of how she suffered, and the severe costs borne by her and her family. To write with such harsh honesty about the devastation she felt and the despair that overwhelmed her, the breakdown in her sense of self-confidence and her intense emotional instability, must take the rarest of commitments to truth. The result is a remarkable communication of understanding and empathy with respect to depression -- combined with a commentary on the illness from a whole range of thoughtful sources. The discussion of how her psychiatric treatments helped her longterm recovery is also deeply insightful.
On a second level, this book is a striking critique of the changing corporate culture and ethos that would lead a once well-regarded company to treat a valued, prize-winning employee in such a brutal and thoughtless way -- claiming that she was not ill, despite clear medical testimony to the contrary, then firing her. Jan Wong sees this as reflecting a new harsher form of "lean and mean" capitalism that, inter alia, threatens the ongoing integrity of journalism as truth-seeking. Perhaps here the author is less perceptive. The General Motors and Fords of the industrial era were equally brutal with their employees -- laying off thousands at will and firing people for unionization efforts -- until strong unions provided some resistance. Now that information and knowledge are becoming the heart of corporate accumulation efforts it is not surprising that information employees are being treated in equally heartless ways. So it is journalism that is changing from a craft in local communities to wage labour in giant conglomerates. Jan Wong is an extreme victim of such change, but so are all those being fired by Postmedia as it moves to produce its newspaper for Ottawa (for instance) from Hamilton hundreds of miles away, or by CTV as it cuts back.
Finally, though, Jan Wong's book is also a tribute to family. How, in the end, is she able to endure and ultimately fight back? Her sister, Gigi, despite past quarrels, "came to my rescue." Her husband, Norman, was there for her throughout the ordeal, despite the disregard for him that she sometimes showed. Her two teen-age children showed a heroic level of self-sufficiency and support for her. Her father never wavered, despite the business pressures her writing may have set off against him. This is in many ways the most inspiring part of this book.
This book is not in the end a journal of despair, though it is heart-rending on the subject of depression. This is a memoir of courage, and a story of resistance in a world that is growing more vicious. Jan Wong has always written with powerful clarity. She continues to do so, even in recounting how her own life became so clouded and corroded.
May 7, 2012
Wong's story of workplace depression wasn't easy to write. The author recalls her two years spent in constant tears, irrational anger, extreme sensitivity to personal slights, overspending, even temporary deafness. It wasn't easy to publish either, until she did it herself. I found it a quick, intense read, a fight by a workaholic to reclaim her identity after her employer cuts her sick pay and eventually fires her. She finds self-knowledge and a new career at the end and even gets an invitation to write in the Globe about her China bureau experience.
The irony is that the newspaper mounts a major series on depression after treating her badly and insisting she was faking the disease. It even hired a security company to film her at public appearances to show she looked confident and was obviously ready to return to work. Great look at a crippling disease from the inside.
The irony is that the newspaper mounts a major series on depression after treating her badly and insisting she was faking the disease. It even hired a security company to film her at public appearances to show she looked confident and was obviously ready to return to work. Great look at a crippling disease from the inside.
April 24, 2013
I couldn't put this book down; it made me laugh, but it also shed light and understanding on an important issue - workplace depression. Out of the Blue is written with much clarity, and is well-researched with historical accounts of societal attitudes, symptoms and treatments. Her story will take you on a roller coaster ride about her experience with the disease. I am glad that Jan Wong shared her story.
April 21, 2024
I can appreciate that writing this was incredibly brave at the time and that she tried her best to help de-stigmatize depression. That being said.
Hated it. Hated it so bad I needed to write all this.
This was an incredibly painful read — in more ways than one! The content felt soooo incredibly redundant which was exacerbated by the flavourless plain style writing. I feel like I read 250 pages of the exact same thing written the exact same way. The lack of in depth descriptions of ANYTHING made it hard to picture anything she was talking abt. The lack of characterization made it hard to care abt anyone in this story, including her. It all felt very surface level — I wish she would have considered and analyzed how other social factors like gender or social class plays into it.
However, my biggest beef is how she approached writing abt depression. I acknowledge that this was written at a different time, but it’s more than just outdated content. She acknowledges at the beginning that her depression was temporary and short term, but that some people suffer from depression permanently and for the long term. This is the only point in the book where she seems to take this into account. Clearly motivated by lasting resentment against the Globe (valid), she uses the book to try to prove how severe and debilitating and devastating depression is. It’s the end-all be-all. It’ll turn you into a terrible person! Everyone will find you insufferable and grow tired of dealing with you! After her family says all this to her psych he comforts them by saying it’s temporary, as she’s not “a depressive by nature”. Would HATE to be one of those! There were so many frustrating things like that, but her section on hereditary predispositions and the physical and long term health effects was genuinely demoralizing.
I’m a little biased and maybe I’m being harsh but this sucked to read. it put me in the most despondent mood every time I picked it up.
Hated it. Hated it so bad I needed to write all this.
This was an incredibly painful read — in more ways than one! The content felt soooo incredibly redundant which was exacerbated by the flavourless plain style writing. I feel like I read 250 pages of the exact same thing written the exact same way. The lack of in depth descriptions of ANYTHING made it hard to picture anything she was talking abt. The lack of characterization made it hard to care abt anyone in this story, including her. It all felt very surface level — I wish she would have considered and analyzed how other social factors like gender or social class plays into it.
However, my biggest beef is how she approached writing abt depression. I acknowledge that this was written at a different time, but it’s more than just outdated content. She acknowledges at the beginning that her depression was temporary and short term, but that some people suffer from depression permanently and for the long term. This is the only point in the book where she seems to take this into account. Clearly motivated by lasting resentment against the Globe (valid), she uses the book to try to prove how severe and debilitating and devastating depression is. It’s the end-all be-all. It’ll turn you into a terrible person! Everyone will find you insufferable and grow tired of dealing with you! After her family says all this to her psych he comforts them by saying it’s temporary, as she’s not “a depressive by nature”. Would HATE to be one of those! There were so many frustrating things like that, but her section on hereditary predispositions and the physical and long term health effects was genuinely demoralizing.
I’m a little biased and maybe I’m being harsh but this sucked to read. it put me in the most despondent mood every time I picked it up.
September 25, 2012
I'm partway through this book but have to put it back on the shelf for a little while. It's really, really good - I so admire Jan Wong as a writer and this is a gripping, intimate book - but it's a bit too much while dealing with stress, anxiety. I need an escape, not more t worry about. I'll give this another go in a few weeks. (June 2012)
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What a book! Jan Wong is a gifted writer, a passionate journalist with tremendous determination and integrity. This is a tough book about a tough woman. I admire her so much for sharing her story. I feel less alone and feel like I better understand the stories of some of the people in my life.
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What a book! Jan Wong is a gifted writer, a passionate journalist with tremendous determination and integrity. This is a tough book about a tough woman. I admire her so much for sharing her story. I feel less alone and feel like I better understand the stories of some of the people in my life.
October 12, 2018
This book's subtitle says it all: "A memoir of workplace depression, recovery, redemption, and, yes, happiness."
Jan Wong was an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, on staff at the Toronto Globe and Mail, one of Canada's largest newspapers. She was tough, focused, and unstoppable. Until national backlash to one of her articles triggered death threats and caused the paper to withdraw its support (despite having approved the story in the first place).
I love the title of this book, with its double meaning. The crisis hit "out of the blue" but also the book is Ms. Wong's story of coming through and out of the "blue" of depression. In the preface she says, "I want to tell you that there is day after night, and hope on the other side." [p. 10]
Oddly enough, I heard about the book in a conversation about independently-published works. Since I'm now an indie author myself, I listened closer, only to recognize the author from her syndicated columns in my local newspaper. I like her columns, and her story caught my interest.
Out of the Blue is a transparent look back at one person's major depressive episode. Jan Wong is a gifted writer, and the text flows like a novel except where she adds portions of relevant research. Those never feel like info dumps, but they do remind us we're reading non-fiction. The author has reconstructed this period in her life from detailed notes and conversations with family and friends, and she offers the disclaimer that her perception of events may not have always been accurate. (For example, was the doctor's receptionist shrill and impatient or merely efficient? Hypersensitivity affects the interpretation.)
Although every person's experience with depression is different, I learned a lot from the information she shared. Perhaps my chief take-away was that talk therapy is at least as important as medication, and that the sooner a person can admit they need help, the sooner they can begin to heal. I was startled to learn that one reason we don't hear more about workplace-induced stress and depression is that employer/employee settlements routinely involve a gag clause forbidding the employee to speak of what happened. Imagine what that does for your healing! Fortunately for us, Ms. Wong held her ground against that clause in her own settlement.
As a Christian, I didn't necessarily embrace the evolutionary theories in the book, but overall it gave me a much better awareness of the effects of depression. It was also an interesting read, and I was glad to see a positive ending. Because I normally review faith-based writing, I do want to include a language warning. Chapter 3 begins with a burst of profanity. If that's an issue for you, just skip the first few paragraphs. These words are snippets of quotes from the overwhelming amount of hate mail Ms. Wong received in response to her news article. Their inclusion is to give us a sense of her circumstances.
Canadian author Jan Wong teaches journalism in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and is a columnist for Toronto Life. For more about the author and her work, visit her website: janwong.ca. If you visit, take note of the image showing that Out of the Blue made the bestseller list (despite being independently published) of the very newspaper that failed to support her as an employee in distress.
[Review copy from the public library.]
Jan Wong was an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, on staff at the Toronto Globe and Mail, one of Canada's largest newspapers. She was tough, focused, and unstoppable. Until national backlash to one of her articles triggered death threats and caused the paper to withdraw its support (despite having approved the story in the first place).
I love the title of this book, with its double meaning. The crisis hit "out of the blue" but also the book is Ms. Wong's story of coming through and out of the "blue" of depression. In the preface she says, "I want to tell you that there is day after night, and hope on the other side." [p. 10]
Oddly enough, I heard about the book in a conversation about independently-published works. Since I'm now an indie author myself, I listened closer, only to recognize the author from her syndicated columns in my local newspaper. I like her columns, and her story caught my interest.
Out of the Blue is a transparent look back at one person's major depressive episode. Jan Wong is a gifted writer, and the text flows like a novel except where she adds portions of relevant research. Those never feel like info dumps, but they do remind us we're reading non-fiction. The author has reconstructed this period in her life from detailed notes and conversations with family and friends, and she offers the disclaimer that her perception of events may not have always been accurate. (For example, was the doctor's receptionist shrill and impatient or merely efficient? Hypersensitivity affects the interpretation.)
Although every person's experience with depression is different, I learned a lot from the information she shared. Perhaps my chief take-away was that talk therapy is at least as important as medication, and that the sooner a person can admit they need help, the sooner they can begin to heal. I was startled to learn that one reason we don't hear more about workplace-induced stress and depression is that employer/employee settlements routinely involve a gag clause forbidding the employee to speak of what happened. Imagine what that does for your healing! Fortunately for us, Ms. Wong held her ground against that clause in her own settlement.
As a Christian, I didn't necessarily embrace the evolutionary theories in the book, but overall it gave me a much better awareness of the effects of depression. It was also an interesting read, and I was glad to see a positive ending. Because I normally review faith-based writing, I do want to include a language warning. Chapter 3 begins with a burst of profanity. If that's an issue for you, just skip the first few paragraphs. These words are snippets of quotes from the overwhelming amount of hate mail Ms. Wong received in response to her news article. Their inclusion is to give us a sense of her circumstances.
Canadian author Jan Wong teaches journalism in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and is a columnist for Toronto Life. For more about the author and her work, visit her website: janwong.ca. If you visit, take note of the image showing that Out of the Blue made the bestseller list (despite being independently published) of the very newspaper that failed to support her as an employee in distress.
[Review copy from the public library.]
January 20, 2013
I have nothing but admiration and respect for Jan Wong’s warrior spirit in this David & Goliath memoir of workplace depression. It was a page turner not only for her juicy blow by blow personal account, but for her research into depression and its treatment – both statistical/scientific, and anecdotal first person accounts of other writers. In the end her philosophic perspective was that this negative experience forced her to take a realistic inventory of her life to be a better person, and she quotes Socrates: the unexamined life is not worth living. She does not allow herself to escape her own critical scrutinizing.
Any discussion of being an “unreliable narrator” becomes a moot point when Wong repeatedly, in her backward look at those two years, questions her perceptions: Did the other parents actually ostracize me? Or did depression distort my reviews of reality? (p.117) A very worthwhile read for all to help dispel our cultural ignorance and myths around depression.
Any discussion of being an “unreliable narrator” becomes a moot point when Wong repeatedly, in her backward look at those two years, questions her perceptions: Did the other parents actually ostracize me? Or did depression distort my reviews of reality? (p.117) A very worthwhile read for all to help dispel our cultural ignorance and myths around depression.
September 3, 2012
This book had honest insights, even as she was an unreliable narrator. The most obvious loss of perspective came when she was trying to justify spending so much money on vacation in NY as a way to escape her anxiety (which she didn't need to justify). On the one hand, she describes how the anxiety overwhelmed her brain to the point that she got lost driving home. On the other hand, she suggests that others who suffer from anxiety as she did but don't have the extra money to spend on the way she visited NY could easily do so on a budget instead by taking complicated bus and subway routes, etc. And she writes all of this straight, with exactly zero ability for empathy -- to understand the state of mind of those she's suggesting this too even though she experienced exactly the same thing. She is able to feel these things but not use that experience to understand how others might feel.
Which in itself was fascinating, even beyond what the book was meant to be about.
Which in itself was fascinating, even beyond what the book was meant to be about.
December 6, 2012
Jan Wong wrote and self published this memoir about her work related depression brought on by a lengthy battle with The Globe and Mail after her coverage of the 2006 Dawson College shootings in Montreal.
Here's a quote from the book:
"He handed me a cup of milky tea and settled into his armchair. He listened intently while I told him about the school shooting,the backlash and my depression. "The business is in a decline," he said in his distinctive gravelly voice. "It's struggling. The last thing they want is what we used to call a'shit disturber'. They want a placid, easygoing reporter. They don't want you...You're like the sand in the oyster. Bland is in. Twelve words per sentence. Three graphs per story."
Most interesting were her candid descriptions of her collapse, her frustrating search for effective treatment, and the lessons she ultimately learned during her recovery.
Here's a quote from the book:
"He handed me a cup of milky tea and settled into his armchair. He listened intently while I told him about the school shooting,the backlash and my depression. "The business is in a decline," he said in his distinctive gravelly voice. "It's struggling. The last thing they want is what we used to call a'shit disturber'. They want a placid, easygoing reporter. They don't want you...You're like the sand in the oyster. Bland is in. Twelve words per sentence. Three graphs per story."
Most interesting were her candid descriptions of her collapse, her frustrating search for effective treatment, and the lessons she ultimately learned during her recovery.
July 3, 2012
Can't recommend this book enough. I found it a difficult read personally, because Wong is talking about her own struggles with depression, and I found it eerily painful and familiar, as I have struggled with depression myself.
I'm not sure how someone can read this book and not be pissed off. I could relate to a lot of her story, and was very angry at her employer for not noticing or acknowledging what was happening to her.
I found that I related to her story both as a journalist, and as a depressive.
Wong's research is so thorough, that I found that I was able to learn a lot of new things, even though I've done a lot of reading about depression.
I hope a lot of people read this book. It's really, really important and I commend Jan Wong for coming forward to tell her story.
I'm not sure how someone can read this book and not be pissed off. I could relate to a lot of her story, and was very angry at her employer for not noticing or acknowledging what was happening to her.
I found that I related to her story both as a journalist, and as a depressive.
Wong's research is so thorough, that I found that I was able to learn a lot of new things, even though I've done a lot of reading about depression.
I hope a lot of people read this book. It's really, really important and I commend Jan Wong for coming forward to tell her story.
August 12, 2012
I've always been a big of fan of Jan Wong's writing. The book details Jan's drop into severe depression, and then details her redemption and her recovery. Despite what you may or may not think of her writing on Quebec that eventually forced her out of her job at the Globe, this story is a heartwarming, humble story of a broken woman and how she found her way again. Some of the more technical/medical/science stuff is a bit drawn out for my taste, but by reading this book, I realized how little I know about depression and mental illness. A great read!
January 5, 2013
I LOVED this book. Jan Wong is a superb journalist and a superb writer. Heck, I even loved her scathing, 'Lunch with Jan' column in the Globe and Mail. Her intelligence just oozes out of every pore of this book.
After a disturbing incident at work, she suffers with crippling depression. Her employer, The Globe and Mail, not only has no patience with her but eventually fires her. She had to publish the book herself after a major publisher backed out, fearing retribution. She masterfully describes her depression and her situation. Highly recommended.
After a disturbing incident at work, she suffers with crippling depression. Her employer, The Globe and Mail, not only has no patience with her but eventually fires her. She had to publish the book herself after a major publisher backed out, fearing retribution. She masterfully describes her depression and her situation. Highly recommended.
May 4, 2022
Excellent book on a difficult subject. Fascinating view into the world of depression; also a reminder that despite some basic commonalities each experience is unique. Jan Wong is brutally honest and yet manages to keep the story from being maudlin. Well done.
July 28, 2013
Can you imagine that Jan Wong is now being sued by the Globe by telling this devastating story!
September 5, 2012
This is part of my just published online review at The Rover:
http://roverarts.com/2012/09/laffaire...
Out of the Blue, by Jan Wong, published by Jan Wong
by Beverly Akerman
05.09.2012
If a mechanic replaces your winter tires and scrimps on tightening the lug nuts, the consequences — a wheel popping off on the highway — can be disastrous. If a doctor leaves a surgical instrument behind, misreads a scan, or overlooks the follow-up test result, a patient can wind up seriously injured, even dead. So what happens if a career journalist confuses correlation and causation on a sensitive file of national importance? And what if, to compound the error, her editor fails to catch the mistake? And all this takes place during a fast-breaking news story?
L’affaire Wong is what happens. Out of the Blue is what happens.
I was a fan of Jan Wong’s for much of her career: her writing was consistently interesting and often extremely personal, displayed warts and all, especially her books about China and her tragic flirtation with Maoism. Now there was teenage rebellion carried to the nth degree.
I enjoyed her work during Tiananmen, had a few problems with her articles as an undercover domestic worker, munched (often somewhat aghast) on the occasional “Lunch With” column, etc.
And then there was the 2006 Dawson College shooting and her infamous Globe and Mail article on the subject. That pretty much put the kibosh on Jan Wong’s appeal for me.
So I was intrigued by the hubbub surrounding her latest offering Out of the Blue, a book dubbed the first “workplace divorce memoir,” in Macleans. Triggering a spate of raised-eyebrow headlines, Wong’s publisher Doubleday declined the book in the final steps before publication, despite the text having already been vetted by their legal team.
I began following the issue, was approached to write about, and was loathe to. Mostly because I didn’t want any of my meagre earnings transferred to Jan Wong’s bank account.
My son was at Dawson College on Sept. 13, 2006 — a date that “lives in infamy” in my overloaded cranium, I’m afraid — and I’ve written about it, too. But my concern was the necessity for more and better gun control — Quebec’s infamous mass murderers Lepine, Fabrikant, and Gill all managed to purchase their lethal weapons legally, and I continue to wonder why our society allows guns to be so easily accessed (the shootings at Club Metropolis, during Pauline Marois’ acceptance speech, may raise the question anew).
Unlike Jan Wong, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the “why” of the shootings — I remain convinced these men were seriously mentally ill. I didn’t care whether Mr. Gill had been refused admission to Dawson (he wasn’t) or was a bullied or abused child (who knows)? But nothing excuses murder.
To me, all murder is hate crime. Unlike Wong, it never occurred to me to ascribe the tragic actions of these men to “racism,” Quebec’s supposed antagonism toward “les autres.” But curiosity finally got the better of me, and I compromised by buying the Kindle version of Wong’s book, about half the price of the paperback.
Several aspects must be considered in evaluating Out of the Blue, the one-and-only (or is that the first?) self-published book to be featured on CBC radio’s Sunday Edition.
There’s the W5 of Wong’s personal narrative: what happened to her, how she felt about it, what she did about it, etc. Which, as might be expected of a best-selling career journalist, is eminently readable and engaging.
And then there’s the objective part: how did L’affaire Wong — the Dawson article and the blowback from it — happen? Where does the responsibility lie? And finally, what to think of the way The Globe and Mail treated what happened next?
I call the first of these considerations “herstory” versus “the truth”– an over-simplification, perhaps, but rebuttals are welcome.
Out of the Blue’s premise is that the people of Quebec, and the Canadian political class, exhibited a major over reaction to Wong’s original article — the paper received a slew of angry letters, Wong received mailed excrement and death threats; her publisher informed her she had damaged the paper’s “brand”; Prime Minister Harper and Premier Charest sent letters to the paper admonishing her, and the House of Commons passed a motion demanding she apologize to the people of Quebec. All this from several paragraphs of “analysis” inferring three Quebec mass murders were a logical outcome of the province’s disdain of those who are not pur laine.
In the book, and in the clips and interviews where she discusses it, Wong treats the uproar to her article as though it was provoked by an innocuous single sentence in some 3,000 words. But she actually spent over 400 words on this “analysis.” Her point was clearly that Quebec’s emphasis on ethnic/racial purity is profoundly alienating and forms part of the explanation for Kimveer Gill’s — and Marc Lepine’s, and Valery Fabrikant’s — murderous rampages.
But those 400 words were not “analysis”: they were preposterous. Is there a single journalist in Canada prepared to stand up on her hind legs and ascribe, in public, Luka Magnotta’s (alleged) crimes to the ethnic exclusivist nature of Quebec society? No. And that’s not simply because Magnotta hadn’t lived in Quebec for very long. It’s because the supposition is, for want of a better word (and with apologies to loons), loony.
Let’s apply Wong-style reasoning to the Robert Picton case in BC. Is there a newspaper that would publish an article suggesting this savage killers actions were linked to, say, British Columbia’s having accepted too many Asian immigrants (after all, immigration from Asia increased, and then Picton killed many women, so…)? I don’t think so. And not just because it would be politically incorrect to do so.
It’s because B following A doesn’t mean A caused B. Or “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” as I learned from The West Wing.
She describes how her brainwave arose:
On the car radio, a talk-show host was saying that all three of Canada’s campus shootings had occurred in Montreal. That’s right, I thought with surprise, but why?… ‘A lot of people are saying: why does this always happen in Quebec?’ Jay [Bryan, of The Montreal Gazette] said. ‘Three doesn’t mean anything. But three out of three in Quebec means something.’…Like epidemiologists who look for patterns in the outbreak and spread of diseases, reporters also seek meaning in chaos—except we must do so on deadline. Three out of three was statistically meaningless, but not in a business where we grasp for any pattern. For journalists, three is a magic number: it’s a trend.
Here is how that trend was described in her 2006 article, “Get under the desk”:
What many outsiders don’t realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city. It hasn’t just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it’s affected immigrants, too.
To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pur laine, the argot for a “pure” francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial “purity” is repugnant. Not in Quebec.
But okay, so in 2006, according to Jan Wong, Montreal is no longer cosmopolitan, Quebec is racist, and Wong has no real understanding of mental illness. Wong committed a cardinal sin of journalism: in the absence of any tangible evidence, she confused correlation and causation. Her article was marred by a breakdown in the professional integrity journalists must be governed by.
There is trash journalism — of Geraldo or Fox News ilk — and there’s serious journalism. Unfortunately — for us and for them — on that day in September 2006, “under deadline” and in the thrall of a civic tragedy cum sensational news story, Jan Wong and Edward Greenspon briefly seemed unable to tell the difference. That neither of them works at The Globe and Mail any longer may not be a coincidence.
By the end of Out of the Blue, Jan Wong still can’t accept she was the author of her own misfortune. Instead, she writes, “like a plot device in an Ian McEwan novel, one random occurrence had set off an inexorable chain of events and everything changed.”
But the event wasn’t random. In my opinion, it was generated by Jan Wong’s poor judgement. And her editor’s.
But enough about L’affaire Wong. What about the rest of the book? Does Wong dish that “dish best served cold”? Does she ever.
Wong commands our sympathy by launching her tale with a poignant scene: the author cowering in her car outside her home, convinced that a pickup truck parked nearby shelters a homicidal maniac–a Quebecer bent on revenge for her Dawson article. This is a delusion, of course. But as a literary device, it works.
Wong uses unnamed co-workers — and a dead woman — to establish that The Globe and Mail’s was a toxic work environment. The late Val Ross, Wong’s friend and colleague, along with two other women co-workers, “had been sick from work-related stress. Val told me she had been taking antidepressants for years…‘It’s the only way I can stand working here.’”
(Of course, the fact that a significant proportion of women in middle age are on antidepressants should also perhaps be noted.)
Wong’s descent into depression is recounted in excruciating detail. And, despite her explanation of a journalist’s near-compulsive note-taking, her behaviour demonstrates a degree of functioning still hard to reconcile in one supposedly so overwhelmed with depression she could no longer work.
Viewed from Wong’s point of view, the devastation that follows her 2006 article is understandable — extreme and total. But viewed from The Globe and Mail’s perspective: Wong maintained she was unable to work for them, could not write for them, for years. On the other hand, she could manage, contemporaneously, to polish off a 90,000 word manuscript while on a couple of months of unpaid leave. And mount a successful tour in support of the finished book.
Who can blame the Globe for being a little tetchy about that, or about the notion that her doctor-prescribed peregrinations to Europe and China — what she calls “the geographic cure” — are a reasonable treatment for depression? Of course, she might say, “But look, I got better using the geographic cure.” In which case, one might reply, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”...read the rest of my review at http://roverarts.com/2012/09/laffaire...
http://roverarts.com/2012/09/laffaire...
Out of the Blue, by Jan Wong, published by Jan Wong
by Beverly Akerman
05.09.2012
If a mechanic replaces your winter tires and scrimps on tightening the lug nuts, the consequences — a wheel popping off on the highway — can be disastrous. If a doctor leaves a surgical instrument behind, misreads a scan, or overlooks the follow-up test result, a patient can wind up seriously injured, even dead. So what happens if a career journalist confuses correlation and causation on a sensitive file of national importance? And what if, to compound the error, her editor fails to catch the mistake? And all this takes place during a fast-breaking news story?
L’affaire Wong is what happens. Out of the Blue is what happens.
I was a fan of Jan Wong’s for much of her career: her writing was consistently interesting and often extremely personal, displayed warts and all, especially her books about China and her tragic flirtation with Maoism. Now there was teenage rebellion carried to the nth degree.
I enjoyed her work during Tiananmen, had a few problems with her articles as an undercover domestic worker, munched (often somewhat aghast) on the occasional “Lunch With” column, etc.
And then there was the 2006 Dawson College shooting and her infamous Globe and Mail article on the subject. That pretty much put the kibosh on Jan Wong’s appeal for me.
So I was intrigued by the hubbub surrounding her latest offering Out of the Blue, a book dubbed the first “workplace divorce memoir,” in Macleans. Triggering a spate of raised-eyebrow headlines, Wong’s publisher Doubleday declined the book in the final steps before publication, despite the text having already been vetted by their legal team.
I began following the issue, was approached to write about, and was loathe to. Mostly because I didn’t want any of my meagre earnings transferred to Jan Wong’s bank account.
My son was at Dawson College on Sept. 13, 2006 — a date that “lives in infamy” in my overloaded cranium, I’m afraid — and I’ve written about it, too. But my concern was the necessity for more and better gun control — Quebec’s infamous mass murderers Lepine, Fabrikant, and Gill all managed to purchase their lethal weapons legally, and I continue to wonder why our society allows guns to be so easily accessed (the shootings at Club Metropolis, during Pauline Marois’ acceptance speech, may raise the question anew).
Unlike Jan Wong, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the “why” of the shootings — I remain convinced these men were seriously mentally ill. I didn’t care whether Mr. Gill had been refused admission to Dawson (he wasn’t) or was a bullied or abused child (who knows)? But nothing excuses murder.
To me, all murder is hate crime. Unlike Wong, it never occurred to me to ascribe the tragic actions of these men to “racism,” Quebec’s supposed antagonism toward “les autres.” But curiosity finally got the better of me, and I compromised by buying the Kindle version of Wong’s book, about half the price of the paperback.
Several aspects must be considered in evaluating Out of the Blue, the one-and-only (or is that the first?) self-published book to be featured on CBC radio’s Sunday Edition.
There’s the W5 of Wong’s personal narrative: what happened to her, how she felt about it, what she did about it, etc. Which, as might be expected of a best-selling career journalist, is eminently readable and engaging.
And then there’s the objective part: how did L’affaire Wong — the Dawson article and the blowback from it — happen? Where does the responsibility lie? And finally, what to think of the way The Globe and Mail treated what happened next?
I call the first of these considerations “herstory” versus “the truth”– an over-simplification, perhaps, but rebuttals are welcome.
Out of the Blue’s premise is that the people of Quebec, and the Canadian political class, exhibited a major over reaction to Wong’s original article — the paper received a slew of angry letters, Wong received mailed excrement and death threats; her publisher informed her she had damaged the paper’s “brand”; Prime Minister Harper and Premier Charest sent letters to the paper admonishing her, and the House of Commons passed a motion demanding she apologize to the people of Quebec. All this from several paragraphs of “analysis” inferring three Quebec mass murders were a logical outcome of the province’s disdain of those who are not pur laine.
In the book, and in the clips and interviews where she discusses it, Wong treats the uproar to her article as though it was provoked by an innocuous single sentence in some 3,000 words. But she actually spent over 400 words on this “analysis.” Her point was clearly that Quebec’s emphasis on ethnic/racial purity is profoundly alienating and forms part of the explanation for Kimveer Gill’s — and Marc Lepine’s, and Valery Fabrikant’s — murderous rampages.
But those 400 words were not “analysis”: they were preposterous. Is there a single journalist in Canada prepared to stand up on her hind legs and ascribe, in public, Luka Magnotta’s (alleged) crimes to the ethnic exclusivist nature of Quebec society? No. And that’s not simply because Magnotta hadn’t lived in Quebec for very long. It’s because the supposition is, for want of a better word (and with apologies to loons), loony.
Let’s apply Wong-style reasoning to the Robert Picton case in BC. Is there a newspaper that would publish an article suggesting this savage killers actions were linked to, say, British Columbia’s having accepted too many Asian immigrants (after all, immigration from Asia increased, and then Picton killed many women, so…)? I don’t think so. And not just because it would be politically incorrect to do so.
It’s because B following A doesn’t mean A caused B. Or “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” as I learned from The West Wing.
She describes how her brainwave arose:
On the car radio, a talk-show host was saying that all three of Canada’s campus shootings had occurred in Montreal. That’s right, I thought with surprise, but why?… ‘A lot of people are saying: why does this always happen in Quebec?’ Jay [Bryan, of The Montreal Gazette] said. ‘Three doesn’t mean anything. But three out of three in Quebec means something.’…Like epidemiologists who look for patterns in the outbreak and spread of diseases, reporters also seek meaning in chaos—except we must do so on deadline. Three out of three was statistically meaningless, but not in a business where we grasp for any pattern. For journalists, three is a magic number: it’s a trend.
Here is how that trend was described in her 2006 article, “Get under the desk”:
What many outsiders don’t realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city. It hasn’t just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it’s affected immigrants, too.
To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pur laine, the argot for a “pure” francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial “purity” is repugnant. Not in Quebec.
But okay, so in 2006, according to Jan Wong, Montreal is no longer cosmopolitan, Quebec is racist, and Wong has no real understanding of mental illness. Wong committed a cardinal sin of journalism: in the absence of any tangible evidence, she confused correlation and causation. Her article was marred by a breakdown in the professional integrity journalists must be governed by.
There is trash journalism — of Geraldo or Fox News ilk — and there’s serious journalism. Unfortunately — for us and for them — on that day in September 2006, “under deadline” and in the thrall of a civic tragedy cum sensational news story, Jan Wong and Edward Greenspon briefly seemed unable to tell the difference. That neither of them works at The Globe and Mail any longer may not be a coincidence.
By the end of Out of the Blue, Jan Wong still can’t accept she was the author of her own misfortune. Instead, she writes, “like a plot device in an Ian McEwan novel, one random occurrence had set off an inexorable chain of events and everything changed.”
But the event wasn’t random. In my opinion, it was generated by Jan Wong’s poor judgement. And her editor’s.
But enough about L’affaire Wong. What about the rest of the book? Does Wong dish that “dish best served cold”? Does she ever.
Wong commands our sympathy by launching her tale with a poignant scene: the author cowering in her car outside her home, convinced that a pickup truck parked nearby shelters a homicidal maniac–a Quebecer bent on revenge for her Dawson article. This is a delusion, of course. But as a literary device, it works.
Wong uses unnamed co-workers — and a dead woman — to establish that The Globe and Mail’s was a toxic work environment. The late Val Ross, Wong’s friend and colleague, along with two other women co-workers, “had been sick from work-related stress. Val told me she had been taking antidepressants for years…‘It’s the only way I can stand working here.’”
(Of course, the fact that a significant proportion of women in middle age are on antidepressants should also perhaps be noted.)
Wong’s descent into depression is recounted in excruciating detail. And, despite her explanation of a journalist’s near-compulsive note-taking, her behaviour demonstrates a degree of functioning still hard to reconcile in one supposedly so overwhelmed with depression she could no longer work.
Viewed from Wong’s point of view, the devastation that follows her 2006 article is understandable — extreme and total. But viewed from The Globe and Mail’s perspective: Wong maintained she was unable to work for them, could not write for them, for years. On the other hand, she could manage, contemporaneously, to polish off a 90,000 word manuscript while on a couple of months of unpaid leave. And mount a successful tour in support of the finished book.
Who can blame the Globe for being a little tetchy about that, or about the notion that her doctor-prescribed peregrinations to Europe and China — what she calls “the geographic cure” — are a reasonable treatment for depression? Of course, she might say, “But look, I got better using the geographic cure.” In which case, one might reply, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”...read the rest of my review at http://roverarts.com/2012/09/laffaire...
December 2, 2022
Having read about Jan's very unique experience in China, up to and including witnessing Tiananmen Square, I was excited to see that she again offers up another interesting experience for readers, this time within her own country. It's sad to say that after all the turmoil she endured in China in an attempt to live up to the communist ideal, followed by the psychological impact of having those same communist ideals shattered, what ended up breaking her was the actions of her own colleagues on her own turf. As a present day reader in essentially early 2023, reading her milquetoast criticism of Canada's language laws back in 2006, one is surprised at how strong a reaction it generated, producing the racial attacks and death threats that led to Wong's breakdown. In the post-Trump, post-Twitter political era, a throwaway paragraph compared to the much bigger story it was attached to, just seems completely lame compared to the political discourse modern readers of today are used to. The fact that the Canadian Parliament, including the prime minister, felt the need to comment on it is shocking to me. As a reminder, Wong isn't some right-wing radical espousing extremist ideology on some darkweb blog, but a seasoned reporter in a national newspaper, criticizing politicians is part of her job. Especially now, when tensions with China are only increasing to the point that political hostage taking and corporate espionage have taken place, losing people in the news industry like Wong, who can provide a rich perspective to events in the Asia sphere, is a loss to Canada as a whole.
In my mind, this story has two villains, The Globe and Mail, Wong's former employer, and Manulife, their insurance provider. Having read this book, I can safely say I'm never planning to subscribe to the Globe in the future, which is probably why they tried so hard to shut Wong down from talking about her bout of workplace induced mental illness. After receiving a downpour of hatemail and threats, the Globe essentially abandoned Wong, throwing her to the wolves in order to save themselves from negative exposure. I wouldn't be surprised if the political sphere didn't also decide to jump on Wong in order to distract from the mass shooting she had just reported on, a much more complex hot potato for politicians to try and deal with. In essence, purposely missing the forest for the tree. When Wong became depressed, she took her disability leave that she was entitled to, but as the Globe was not willing to recognize severe depression as an illness, fought with her over granting her leave and associated sick pay. This led to a huge cluster-f*ck legal battle between herself, her union, the Globe and Manulife that lasted years and continued to tax her mental health, personal, and professional relationships. The course of this legal battle, along with her battle against depression, is what makes up the bulk of the narrative in this work.
In some ways, I think Wong's goal in writing this book was not only to increase awareness about depression and advocate for mental health, but as a huge thank-you to those personal and professional relationships she heavily leaned on while dealing with her bout of mental illness. I really don't know if Wong would have managed to keep on going without her robust support system, and she repeatedly thanks her husband and children for their support. She's very open about including both her rose colored view of how she behaved and the perspective of those who actually had to live with her. Stuff like false memories of making sumptuous family feasts, to the reality of her teenage children making their family meals while she could do nothing; or how both her children and husband had to counsel each other on the best way to deal with her outbursts of anger or sadness while trying to keep their own emotions in check. Another resource Wong leaned heavily on and one which she noted towards the end of the novel is her personal wealth. Wong had the finances available to regularly see a psychiatrist, afford the gambit of anti-depressants a patient must go through until they find the correct one (a sort of trial by fire), and in escapism, being able to travel the country and fly overseas. The reality is very few people have the position of privilege Wong has, both in terms of actual money and in friends and family, which Wong highlights as a reason depression needs to be de-stigmatized. it's very easy for a person to spiral out of control without a safety-net, which could end in suicide or worse, a mass-shooting.
In this way we enter the conundrum Wong faced in her legal battle. Depression isn't a visible illness, it's existence is proved, in a way, by a series of doctor's notes. In order to prepare for the worst, her family and friends, along with a few colleagues, did their best to keep her together. However, by creating this façade of normalcy, of avoiding the very worst, her insurance provider and employer challenged the legitimacy of her diagnosis. On one hand, as her family's sole provider, she needed to provide interviews and market her books, on the other, in the legal battle, the Globe and Manulife used these interviews to challenge her depression diagnosis. This duality can be summed up by the author photo of Wong present in the back cover of the book. Usually a throw away image few readers look at, Wong used this space to include a meta aspect to the book. At first glace, it seems like a happy photo of the author, after telling the tale of how it was taken at the height of her depression to market her new book, it takes on whole new meaning, of being able to hide your true self behind a mask of face filters and photoshop.
Truly at the end of this work you feel a sense of frustration. As a layperson, my understanding is that an insurance company is supposed to protect the people involved, and that by outsourcing it to a third party, Manulife was supposed to make things more cost-effective and efficient for the Globe. However, in this situation, it feels like they made the problems ten times worse and ten times more expensive for everyone involved. It's almost as if someone intentionally tried to crater their own reputations. And, as usual, when a corporation attempts a cost-cutting measure, an unknown situation arises that leads them to lose significantly more money than what they thought they would save. I mean, for an even smaller example, some people used their personal e-mails to send racially charged hate mail to Wong, which of course she had no problems publishing in her book for eternal posterity, like, how dumb can you get? If the Globe had taken depression seriously as a health problem they would have saved more money and their reputation, but as the legal battle raged on, I assume someone in middle management fell under the sunk-cost fallacy and refused to admit the whole thing was a mistake.
Overall, I think if you're a fan of Wong's other work this is definitely a must read. Otherwise, I'd check out Red China Blues before this one.
Some quotes I wanted to highlight:
"And unless you have experienced racism, it is hard to explain its corrosiveness. You feel frightened and violated and impotent all at once. When race is perceived to be a factor, the hurt from almost any slight, even an innocent, unintended one, can last a lifetime. Before she married my father, my mother worked as an operating-room nurse in Montreal for Wilder Penfield, the renowned neurosurgeon. Mom had loved her job and love to reminisce about how she could slap the correct scalpel into his palm before he could ask for it. She also never forgot that she was the only team member he had not once invited to his Westmount home." (Pg.36)
"The attack by Le Quebecois was only the beginning. The next morning a caricature in Le Devoir, a respected Quebec daily, showed me opening fortune cookies to decode the news. The sketch depicted me with buckteeth and Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, an echo of the anti-Japanese stereotypes of the Second World War. My race was irrelevant to my reporting. To my surprise, my eyes filled with tears." (Pg.39)
"In 2009, Manulife Financial cut off long-term disability benefits to a twenty-nine-year old IBM employee in Quebec who had been off work for depression. The insurer discovered Facebook photos of her on a beach. She told reporters that her doctor had advised her to travel. Perhaps the geographic cure was working! She was smiling! The story was news because it was one of the first times an insurer had investigated a claimant using social-network information. But what struck me was how depression and one of its cures-escaping particular stressors-is so misunderstood. The ancient flight-or-fight reflex is misconstrued as latter-day fraud."(Pg.189)
Probably one of the creepiest moments in the book and worth paying attention to:
"I have a confession to make. I did smile now and then on my book tour. And Manulife was there to record it. To my astonishment, the insurer hired Garda, a security agency best known for safeguarding buildings and hauling bullion, to surreptitiously videotape me. I was so paranoid about snipers it never occurred to me I'd be shot instead with a video camera that secretly recorded my every smile. I would not find out about the surveillance until months later, when my lawyer obtained the DVDs from Manulife.....The surveillance recorders also reminded me of Communist China in the 1980s."(Pg.191)
In my mind, this story has two villains, The Globe and Mail, Wong's former employer, and Manulife, their insurance provider. Having read this book, I can safely say I'm never planning to subscribe to the Globe in the future, which is probably why they tried so hard to shut Wong down from talking about her bout of workplace induced mental illness. After receiving a downpour of hatemail and threats, the Globe essentially abandoned Wong, throwing her to the wolves in order to save themselves from negative exposure. I wouldn't be surprised if the political sphere didn't also decide to jump on Wong in order to distract from the mass shooting she had just reported on, a much more complex hot potato for politicians to try and deal with. In essence, purposely missing the forest for the tree. When Wong became depressed, she took her disability leave that she was entitled to, but as the Globe was not willing to recognize severe depression as an illness, fought with her over granting her leave and associated sick pay. This led to a huge cluster-f*ck legal battle between herself, her union, the Globe and Manulife that lasted years and continued to tax her mental health, personal, and professional relationships. The course of this legal battle, along with her battle against depression, is what makes up the bulk of the narrative in this work.
In some ways, I think Wong's goal in writing this book was not only to increase awareness about depression and advocate for mental health, but as a huge thank-you to those personal and professional relationships she heavily leaned on while dealing with her bout of mental illness. I really don't know if Wong would have managed to keep on going without her robust support system, and she repeatedly thanks her husband and children for their support. She's very open about including both her rose colored view of how she behaved and the perspective of those who actually had to live with her. Stuff like false memories of making sumptuous family feasts, to the reality of her teenage children making their family meals while she could do nothing; or how both her children and husband had to counsel each other on the best way to deal with her outbursts of anger or sadness while trying to keep their own emotions in check. Another resource Wong leaned heavily on and one which she noted towards the end of the novel is her personal wealth. Wong had the finances available to regularly see a psychiatrist, afford the gambit of anti-depressants a patient must go through until they find the correct one (a sort of trial by fire), and in escapism, being able to travel the country and fly overseas. The reality is very few people have the position of privilege Wong has, both in terms of actual money and in friends and family, which Wong highlights as a reason depression needs to be de-stigmatized. it's very easy for a person to spiral out of control without a safety-net, which could end in suicide or worse, a mass-shooting.
In this way we enter the conundrum Wong faced in her legal battle. Depression isn't a visible illness, it's existence is proved, in a way, by a series of doctor's notes. In order to prepare for the worst, her family and friends, along with a few colleagues, did their best to keep her together. However, by creating this façade of normalcy, of avoiding the very worst, her insurance provider and employer challenged the legitimacy of her diagnosis. On one hand, as her family's sole provider, she needed to provide interviews and market her books, on the other, in the legal battle, the Globe and Manulife used these interviews to challenge her depression diagnosis. This duality can be summed up by the author photo of Wong present in the back cover of the book. Usually a throw away image few readers look at, Wong used this space to include a meta aspect to the book. At first glace, it seems like a happy photo of the author, after telling the tale of how it was taken at the height of her depression to market her new book, it takes on whole new meaning, of being able to hide your true self behind a mask of face filters and photoshop.
Truly at the end of this work you feel a sense of frustration. As a layperson, my understanding is that an insurance company is supposed to protect the people involved, and that by outsourcing it to a third party, Manulife was supposed to make things more cost-effective and efficient for the Globe. However, in this situation, it feels like they made the problems ten times worse and ten times more expensive for everyone involved. It's almost as if someone intentionally tried to crater their own reputations. And, as usual, when a corporation attempts a cost-cutting measure, an unknown situation arises that leads them to lose significantly more money than what they thought they would save. I mean, for an even smaller example, some people used their personal e-mails to send racially charged hate mail to Wong, which of course she had no problems publishing in her book for eternal posterity, like, how dumb can you get? If the Globe had taken depression seriously as a health problem they would have saved more money and their reputation, but as the legal battle raged on, I assume someone in middle management fell under the sunk-cost fallacy and refused to admit the whole thing was a mistake.
Overall, I think if you're a fan of Wong's other work this is definitely a must read. Otherwise, I'd check out Red China Blues before this one.
Some quotes I wanted to highlight:
"And unless you have experienced racism, it is hard to explain its corrosiveness. You feel frightened and violated and impotent all at once. When race is perceived to be a factor, the hurt from almost any slight, even an innocent, unintended one, can last a lifetime. Before she married my father, my mother worked as an operating-room nurse in Montreal for Wilder Penfield, the renowned neurosurgeon. Mom had loved her job and love to reminisce about how she could slap the correct scalpel into his palm before he could ask for it. She also never forgot that she was the only team member he had not once invited to his Westmount home." (Pg.36)
"The attack by Le Quebecois was only the beginning. The next morning a caricature in Le Devoir, a respected Quebec daily, showed me opening fortune cookies to decode the news. The sketch depicted me with buckteeth and Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, an echo of the anti-Japanese stereotypes of the Second World War. My race was irrelevant to my reporting. To my surprise, my eyes filled with tears." (Pg.39)
"In 2009, Manulife Financial cut off long-term disability benefits to a twenty-nine-year old IBM employee in Quebec who had been off work for depression. The insurer discovered Facebook photos of her on a beach. She told reporters that her doctor had advised her to travel. Perhaps the geographic cure was working! She was smiling! The story was news because it was one of the first times an insurer had investigated a claimant using social-network information. But what struck me was how depression and one of its cures-escaping particular stressors-is so misunderstood. The ancient flight-or-fight reflex is misconstrued as latter-day fraud."(Pg.189)
Probably one of the creepiest moments in the book and worth paying attention to:
"I have a confession to make. I did smile now and then on my book tour. And Manulife was there to record it. To my astonishment, the insurer hired Garda, a security agency best known for safeguarding buildings and hauling bullion, to surreptitiously videotape me. I was so paranoid about snipers it never occurred to me I'd be shot instead with a video camera that secretly recorded my every smile. I would not find out about the surveillance until months later, when my lawyer obtained the DVDs from Manulife.....The surveillance recorders also reminded me of Communist China in the 1980s."(Pg.191)
October 22, 2016
Wong was a hard nosed investigative journalist who worked for the Globe and Mail for decades until she spiraled into a clinical depression in 2006. This is the story of her difficult struggle with her illness and her long road to recovery.
It all began when Wong wrote an article on the shooting at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. In that article she noted how the shooter as well as the shooters at the Ecole Polytechnique and Concordia in previous years, were all immigrants. Her narrative suggested that all three felt marginalized in a province that valued only “pure Quebecers”. The article, vetted by her editors before it was published, produced a firestorm of criticism and a horrific backlash began. Wong knew when she wrote the piece that it would raise “sensitivities”, but she was shocked at the firestorm that raged for weeks on the front pages of Quebec newspapers.
Wong received threatening e mails, racist comments, a rash of hate mail and even death threats. Outraged politicians in Quebec heaped abuse on the Globe and Wong was denounced in Parliament. Her family’s restaurant in Montreal was also threatened. Phillip Crawley, her publisher at the Globe with whom she had always had a good relationship was furious, accusing her of destroying the newspaper’s relationship with their Quebec readers and stated he regretted printing the article.
Without The Globe standing behind her, Wong felt humiliated, betrayed and abandoned. She began to feel ostracized at work and as her anxiety mounted, she became so depressed she was unable to work. She took medical leave from her job, but despite the care provided by her physician and trying a host of various antidepressant medications, her illness continued unabated for two years. During that period, The Globe questioned the legitimacy of her illness and continually pressured her to return to work.
What follows is Wong’s account of her descent into clinical depression. She describes the effect her illness on her supportive husband, her two sons and her home life. She details the long drawn out legal battle with the newspaper to acknowledge her illness, which involved a never ending flow of medical forms and examinations by different physicians. Eventually mediation and arbitration brought Wong some, but not complete closure. The Globe terminated her employment in 2008 and she received a settlement that she had to fight hard to receive.
Wong presents a complete and accurate picture of depression—its history, signs, symptoms and associated pathology. She also tries to highlight the problem of “workplace depression”, depression brought on by the stressors of jobs in workplaces where people work hard, often feel unfulfilled and are abandoned by their employers when they cannot cope.
Following her experience, Wong wrote this book to tell her story publically. However with the publication date fast approaching, her long time publisher Doubleday requested she censor much of what she had written about the newspaper. When she refused to do so, they pulled out of the project, cancelling the book a few days before its scheduled printing. Wong was disappointed but not deterred and published the book herself, a book that ultimately became a best seller and a stark reminder that corporate or political interests cannot silence a determined voice.
Of course this is only one side of the story. We never hear the Globe and Mail’s version of the events and they have remained silent on the subject.
Still, the honesty and determination with which Wong has dealt with such a sensitive matter makes for a compelling read.
It all began when Wong wrote an article on the shooting at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. In that article she noted how the shooter as well as the shooters at the Ecole Polytechnique and Concordia in previous years, were all immigrants. Her narrative suggested that all three felt marginalized in a province that valued only “pure Quebecers”. The article, vetted by her editors before it was published, produced a firestorm of criticism and a horrific backlash began. Wong knew when she wrote the piece that it would raise “sensitivities”, but she was shocked at the firestorm that raged for weeks on the front pages of Quebec newspapers.
Wong received threatening e mails, racist comments, a rash of hate mail and even death threats. Outraged politicians in Quebec heaped abuse on the Globe and Wong was denounced in Parliament. Her family’s restaurant in Montreal was also threatened. Phillip Crawley, her publisher at the Globe with whom she had always had a good relationship was furious, accusing her of destroying the newspaper’s relationship with their Quebec readers and stated he regretted printing the article.
Without The Globe standing behind her, Wong felt humiliated, betrayed and abandoned. She began to feel ostracized at work and as her anxiety mounted, she became so depressed she was unable to work. She took medical leave from her job, but despite the care provided by her physician and trying a host of various antidepressant medications, her illness continued unabated for two years. During that period, The Globe questioned the legitimacy of her illness and continually pressured her to return to work.
What follows is Wong’s account of her descent into clinical depression. She describes the effect her illness on her supportive husband, her two sons and her home life. She details the long drawn out legal battle with the newspaper to acknowledge her illness, which involved a never ending flow of medical forms and examinations by different physicians. Eventually mediation and arbitration brought Wong some, but not complete closure. The Globe terminated her employment in 2008 and she received a settlement that she had to fight hard to receive.
Wong presents a complete and accurate picture of depression—its history, signs, symptoms and associated pathology. She also tries to highlight the problem of “workplace depression”, depression brought on by the stressors of jobs in workplaces where people work hard, often feel unfulfilled and are abandoned by their employers when they cannot cope.
Following her experience, Wong wrote this book to tell her story publically. However with the publication date fast approaching, her long time publisher Doubleday requested she censor much of what she had written about the newspaper. When she refused to do so, they pulled out of the project, cancelling the book a few days before its scheduled printing. Wong was disappointed but not deterred and published the book herself, a book that ultimately became a best seller and a stark reminder that corporate or political interests cannot silence a determined voice.
Of course this is only one side of the story. We never hear the Globe and Mail’s version of the events and they have remained silent on the subject.
Still, the honesty and determination with which Wong has dealt with such a sensitive matter makes for a compelling read.
December 26, 2012
I have mixed feelings after reading this book. It is a testimonial of the award-winning and veteran Globe and Mail reporter Jan Wong, her account of the injustice done to her by the newspaper for which she had worked for twenty years. After publishing her Dawson College shooting feature article in 2006, unexpected backlashes inundated The Globe and the reporter and her family, including death threats to Wong. The following two years brought her depression and the destruction of a journalism career at the Globe. To put a long story short, the ending is a happy one for her. After numerous tormenting back-and-forth employment related medical and legal wrangling, Wong ultimately tasted total victory, as she accepted a settlement in a fat cheque and lifting of an earlier stipulated gag order.
Now, allow me to be as honest as Wong is in her account of her ordeal, I feel that yes, on the one hand if what she had cited are totally accurate, the Globe is a bully and nasty employer, refusing to stand behind what they had published but instead kicked out their own writer in the face of stronger bullies: politicians and power-based public opinion. No, we should not be so naive to think there's absolute journalistic freedom in our democratic society.
That said, I feel too that in her writing this book, a right for which she had fought vehemently in her settlement, ie, no gag order, I can sense a gratuitous, vengeful spirit. Certainly she had been the victim of workplace bullying and unjust public opinion, her lashing out from her own personal lens gives me an impression of a tattered style and leaves me with a bitter taste. No doubt, as I've always thought after reading almost all of her books, Wong is one gifted writer. Nevertheless, I find myself in an unsettling ambivalence with this one. We are seeing the traditional news publishing industry quickly approaching an imminent demise as consumers have taken to the Internet and eReading in droves, and with the social media being the most accessible news platform, but one should lament such loss, the dying of traditional journalism, instead of feeling vindicated. Further, if the settlement is not so totally victorious, in other words, if the financial compensation is of a lesser amount, would that change the perspective a bit, and maybe a longer depression to deal with? I'm not doubting the illness per se, but the cure of it may point to something deeper in the human soul.
Now, allow me to be as honest as Wong is in her account of her ordeal, I feel that yes, on the one hand if what she had cited are totally accurate, the Globe is a bully and nasty employer, refusing to stand behind what they had published but instead kicked out their own writer in the face of stronger bullies: politicians and power-based public opinion. No, we should not be so naive to think there's absolute journalistic freedom in our democratic society.
That said, I feel too that in her writing this book, a right for which she had fought vehemently in her settlement, ie, no gag order, I can sense a gratuitous, vengeful spirit. Certainly she had been the victim of workplace bullying and unjust public opinion, her lashing out from her own personal lens gives me an impression of a tattered style and leaves me with a bitter taste. No doubt, as I've always thought after reading almost all of her books, Wong is one gifted writer. Nevertheless, I find myself in an unsettling ambivalence with this one. We are seeing the traditional news publishing industry quickly approaching an imminent demise as consumers have taken to the Internet and eReading in droves, and with the social media being the most accessible news platform, but one should lament such loss, the dying of traditional journalism, instead of feeling vindicated. Further, if the settlement is not so totally victorious, in other words, if the financial compensation is of a lesser amount, would that change the perspective a bit, and maybe a longer depression to deal with? I'm not doubting the illness per se, but the cure of it may point to something deeper in the human soul.
November 19, 2014
This is a story of one woman's fight with a powerful corporation--The Globe and Mail newspaper; actually two powerful corporations if you include ManuLife, the insurer who tried not to insure! It's almost kafkaesque in the the machinations big corporations will apparently involve themselves in to avoid doing the right thing. The trouble all started with an article Ms Wong wrote when she was one of the top reporters at the Globe. In it Ms Wong wrote about three mass shootings in Quebec and wondered if the immigrant men who committed the crimes had grown up feeling that they weren't considered "true" quebcois. This article caused a huge furor that went as far as Parliament Hill. Although Lawrence Greenspon, the G & M managing editor, had to have written off on the article before it went to press, when the trouble started everyone took one step back from Wong, and it got worse. She started a spiral down into deep depression. ManuLife refused to recognize her depression as a disability, so Wong lost money, as well as her livelihood, her status, friends and coworkers, and almost, her sanity. This is a story of how she hung on and climbed out of the pit she'd been thrown into. Even Doubleday, the people who were going to publish this book, backed out at the last minute because the Globe had been mentioned in a bad light and there were pressures, apparently. This is a must read for those interested in corporate-style justice.
June 25, 2012
I wanted to read this book quickly as many are on hold for it at my library. If you are feeling depressed, seek help as soon as possible by contacting your family doctor, calling a crisis line, or work support program. You are not alone.
This memoir follows the author and her battle of depression whilst employed as a journalist with the Globe and Mail. Jan receives a death threat following publication of one of her stories and plunges into deep depression and terror. Life with her husband and two sons will never be the same.
Jan notes her battle of symptoms, medication trials, side effects and raw emotional moments. Now a little more understood, she documents reactions of work mates, friends, family and professionals, positive and negative. She engages in a long war with Manulife, her benefit company, to prove she is, in fact, sick.
Her blend of reporter style and personal experience makes this a great read. How do you go back to work? What do you do when you hit that wall? Her journey is inspiring and the reader response a step in the right direction to remove the depression stigma. If you're curious about the struggles of depression, this is a great testimony to it.
Thanks Jan. You moved and motivated me.
This memoir follows the author and her battle of depression whilst employed as a journalist with the Globe and Mail. Jan receives a death threat following publication of one of her stories and plunges into deep depression and terror. Life with her husband and two sons will never be the same.
Jan notes her battle of symptoms, medication trials, side effects and raw emotional moments. Now a little more understood, she documents reactions of work mates, friends, family and professionals, positive and negative. She engages in a long war with Manulife, her benefit company, to prove she is, in fact, sick.
Her blend of reporter style and personal experience makes this a great read. How do you go back to work? What do you do when you hit that wall? Her journey is inspiring and the reader response a step in the right direction to remove the depression stigma. If you're curious about the struggles of depression, this is a great testimony to it.
Thanks Jan. You moved and motivated me.
October 25, 2012
Former journalist at The Globe and Mail Jan Wong recounts her battle with workplace depression. She shares her symptoms and the lack of assistance for and awareness of her illness from her employer as well as what effect her depression had on her family.
The reaction to an article she wrote and what became known as 'L'Affaire Wong' led to her depression. Jan reported on the Dawson College shooting in 2006, her article for the Globe used a term that was considered prejudiced in it's use towards some French Canadians. In response to the article Jan received hate e-mails, including death threats, suffered media backlash and The Globe retracted their support for her. Jan recounts how as she fell into depression her work and insurance would not recognize that she was sick and about her repeated struggles with insurance claims for short-term and long-term disability.
This book made me reflect on the power of hate and marginalization; Jan suffered from it and so too did the people who felt wronged by the language used in her article.
Jan self-published this book after her publisher pulled out. The bibliography includes many of the books that Jan mentions about workplace stress and depression.
The reaction to an article she wrote and what became known as 'L'Affaire Wong' led to her depression. Jan reported on the Dawson College shooting in 2006, her article for the Globe used a term that was considered prejudiced in it's use towards some French Canadians. In response to the article Jan received hate e-mails, including death threats, suffered media backlash and The Globe retracted their support for her. Jan recounts how as she fell into depression her work and insurance would not recognize that she was sick and about her repeated struggles with insurance claims for short-term and long-term disability.
This book made me reflect on the power of hate and marginalization; Jan suffered from it and so too did the people who felt wronged by the language used in her article.
Jan self-published this book after her publisher pulled out. The bibliography includes many of the books that Jan mentions about workplace stress and depression.
Read
June 10, 2012If you want to learn about depression that seems irrational, that doesn't have a no-brainer cause like loss of a loved one or medical problems, this is a fine book to read. Veteran reporter Jan Wong wrote a controversial story about a school shooting for the Globe & Mail. It actually had some unsupported opinion in the middle of it, but editors approved the idea and the article. The public reacted with hate mail, politicians denounced Wong, and the paper mostly failed to support her. She fell into a major depression which made her paranoid and, putting it politely, hard to live with. She eventually recovered. The company tried to stop her from telling her side and she self-published the book which is also now on e-readers. There is some glib popular science but it is a compelling read. I particularly liked the reasoning about fight or flight (and why travel helps depression), and the detailed descriptions of her depressed perceptions of social situations vs. her later reporting and triangulation of the same situations.
October 12, 2012
I enjoyed Out of the Blue and in particular the focus on the workplace and how it handles depression. Suffering from depression I was naive to believe that my HR department would be a place of support and assistance. Reading Jan's story made me feel less alone and less ashamed that I was off work for being sick. I did have a hard time with the fact that money wasn't a huge issue for her as it is for so many other people - she was able to stand her ground firmly when dealing with her privacy rights and the insurance company whereas many people, myself included, had a choice between not paying my mortgage or feeding my kids or signing away my privacy.
Jan was able to put a lot of things I was feeling into words which was an incredible feeling (something that others suffering from depression can understand). I found myself yelling "yes!" out loud as I read her describe her emotions and mind set during her ordeal. Her story was inspiring and comforting and I highly recommend it for anyone feeling abandoned or bullied by their employer.
Jan was able to put a lot of things I was feeling into words which was an incredible feeling (something that others suffering from depression can understand). I found myself yelling "yes!" out loud as I read her describe her emotions and mind set during her ordeal. Her story was inspiring and comforting and I highly recommend it for anyone feeling abandoned or bullied by their employer.
June 19, 2012
Jan Wong,s fall into depression occurred following a column she wrote that was published in the Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper. Labeling the perpetrator of a school shooting in Quebec as a non "pure laine" catapulted her into a maelstrom of abuse: death threats, racial attacks on herself and her family, condemnation of her from politicians in the Canadian parliament. Most damaging of all, her newspaper failed to back her, and after the onset of a mde (major depressive episode), denied her claim of sickness, cut off her benefits, and eventually fired her. This book is her response and her redemption.
Ms. Wong is a reader's writer: clear and concise, a storyteller that weaves a wonderful web of words. But more than this, her tale is terrifically informative, infused with passion, pathos and pain that left me both more knowledgeable about depression but also filled with admiration for the strength and endurance of this writer.
Ms. Wong is a reader's writer: clear and concise, a storyteller that weaves a wonderful web of words. But more than this, her tale is terrifically informative, infused with passion, pathos and pain that left me both more knowledgeable about depression but also filled with admiration for the strength and endurance of this writer.
June 25, 2012
An interesting memoir of workplace depression (and incidentally Canadian journalism). Jan Wong, a successful and sometimes controversial journalist, told the story of how she wrote an article for a newspaper, it caused a backlash, and how the newspaper did not back her. Then she became depressed and fought a legal battle with her employer, because they (or the insurance company) did not believe she was depressed (or just did not want to pay for their medical obligations--perhaps they mistakenly thought that if they fought her, she would drop the case and they could save money.) This is also an important book because there are few if any books about workplace depression due to legal difficulties. Jan Wong also successfully fought a non-disclosure agreement for the ultimate benefit of the reader.
April 14, 2013
A great example of investigative journalism as Wong describes the way in which she gathered info for a story, followed the usual processes, and then was basically dumped by her newspaper(the Globe & Mail).
I loved the fact that she drove everyone crazy by refusing to sign gag orders (there's a move now to make them illegal especially in settlements around child abuse, etc.) and then went on to self-publish the book because Doubleday chickened out.
The trouble with the book is that Wong herself is not particularly likeable - in fact, that's what the G&M loved about her - she wasn't afraid of making herself unpleasant. But the parts about the shopping and the way she treated her family were tough to slog through. It takes courage to put that out there, and kudos to her for doing so.
I loved the fact that she drove everyone crazy by refusing to sign gag orders (there's a move now to make them illegal especially in settlements around child abuse, etc.) and then went on to self-publish the book because Doubleday chickened out.
The trouble with the book is that Wong herself is not particularly likeable - in fact, that's what the G&M loved about her - she wasn't afraid of making herself unpleasant. But the parts about the shopping and the way she treated her family were tough to slog through. It takes courage to put that out there, and kudos to her for doing so.
July 23, 2012
I was a little disappointed withi this book. Although she is, of course, a good writer, I felt a bit manipulated by her tale. While I can completely empathize with anyone suffering from depression, I also tried to put myself in the shoes of her employers or collagues. I would not necessarily recommend this to someone suffering from, or dealing with someone else with depression. Much of her experience was quite extreme - from the support she did and didnt have, the resources available to her, the ability to travel etc. I kept thinking - both she and her employer may have made a bad decision with publishing the article that acted as a catlyst to her depression. Things then spiraled downhill from there - with both behaving badly again.
August 9, 2012
As a student currently in the throws of depression and anxiety, I found this book really spoke to me. Jan Wong is witty and funny, in spite of discussing a painful and difficult time in her life. Anyone who has not experienced mental illness will get an excellent understanding of what it feels like to be sick in this way, and anyone who has will identify with the ups and downs of recovery. It does not speak highly of society's views of mental illness, but I hope that a book like this written by a writer of such caliber will fforce individuals to rethink their prejudices and preconceived notions, thereby executing social change. It's high time the world woke up to the needs of its most vulnerable, irrespective of how outwardly strong they may appear.
October 22, 2012
An interesting read. The author describes her experience with workplace depression (and bullying) with alarming level of honesty. It's shocking how Globe and Mail treated her. It's nothing short of severe bullying and comes close to invasion of her rights. Because she's very different from me (or so I think), I found it hard to relate to her personally. So I found it hard to care about her as much as someone more tender for the lack of a better word. Yet I felt her rage. What they did to her was wrong, and I could see why she behaved the way she did. I hope it helps expose the truth that bullying is not just in school yards, but it can continue into adult world. Shame on Globe and Mail.
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