Emotional Female
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Average rating2.5
Yumiko Kadota was every Asian parent's dream: model student, top of her class in medical school and on track to becoming a surgeon. A self-confessed workaholic, she regularly put ‘knife before life’, knowing it was all going to be worth it because it would lead to her longed-for career. But if the punishing hours in surgery weren’t hard enough, she also faced challenges as a young female surgeon navigating a male-dominated specialty. She was regularly left to carry out complex procedures without senior surgeons’ oversight; she was called all sorts of things, from ‘emotional’ to ‘too confident’; and she was expected to work a relentless on-call roster – sometimes seventy hours a week or more – to prove herself. Eventually it was too much and Yumiko quit. Emotional Female is her account of what it was like to train in the Australian public hospital system, and what made her walk away. Yumiko Kadota is a voice for her generation when it comes to burnout and finding the resilience to rebuild after suffering a physical, emotional and existential breakdown. This is a brave, honest and unflinching work from a major new talent.
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Yumiko has such an important and interesting story. As someone not involved in the medical field, it gave me a much more profound respect for doctors and surgeons and it made me realise just how extensive and harsh the roads to get there are. I felt shocked and angered knowing that the sexism and racism within the medical system is so widespread and deeply engrained that those experiencing it rarely speak up. I am in awe of Yumiko for the strength and bravery it would have taken to step away and to share her story. It was lovely to see the direct impacts of this at the end of the book.
At no point in the story did I know where it was going, and I found the writing rather clinical and simplistic. I was also coming out of a major reading slump when I began reading this so it took me quite a while to get through, but I still felt engaged whenever I did pick it up. This isn't the kind of book I see myself reading again, but I would highly recommend it for anybody hoping to go into the medical field. It covers Yumiko's personal story going from medical school through to becoming a surgical registrar, as she experiences sexism, racism, overworking, burnout, and mental illness.
3.5 stars
