Content Warning: This episode discusses postpartum depression.
Canadian graphic memoirist Teresa Wong has had experiences with parenting that didn’t really match the way things usually go. Her parents were city kids in China sent to work on rural communes during Mao’s cultural revolution. They escaped, swam to Hong Kong where they met, and ended up in Calgary, where Teresa and her brother were born. But a language barrier and their own experiences without fathers present meant that little to no nurturing took place. Teresa’s father never attended her high school or college graduations, never thought to go to the launch parties for her acclaimed graphic memoirs, Dear Scarlet and All Our Ordinary Stories. When Teresa had her first baby, Scarlet, she experienced postpartum depression, which she was unprepared for. In both cases, the subjects of her two books, Teresa was left to figure out how to parent herself and others. Now she’s ready to share how she handled that and the lessons she learned.
