ENOUGH

Zachry’s unflinching memoir chronicles her search for love while coping with depression.

The first “major heartbreak” of Zachry’s life occurred when she was a teenager and her parents left their home country of Malaysia to work in Ghana for several years. Their departure, and their decision to send her and her brother to live with their grandmother, felt like “punishment for a crime [she] had unknowingly committed.” Half Malay and half Indian, Zachry had thrived in cosmopolitan Kuala Lumpur, but in the small town of Alor Star, she initially struggled to fit in. When Zachry returned to Kuala Lumpur for university, she was drugged and raped and fell into deep depression, considering suicide. After she transferred schools, graduated, and found a job, an abusive boyfriend sent her into another depression. She fell into a cycle of self-soothing through sex and alcohol. Her self-destructive behavior seemed like it might end when she fell in love with Daniel, an American friend of a friend. But soon after Zachry moved to Japan to be with Daniel, her suicidal thoughts returned. Daniel and the author ultimately moved from Japan to Canada and then to Kentucky, where they married and had two daughters. Zachry often struggled to find appropriate treatment, which she recounts candidly here. Her dedication to her two little girls strengthened her resolve to manage her illness, as did her love for her beautiful—though imperfect—new country. The author writes movingly of the challenges of mental illness. She also ably depicts life as an immigrant, appreciating some of the simple pleasures of her new community; for example, she “felt a kinship with the old women in Kentucky, who sat on porches in their rocking chairs, inhaling Marlboros between sips of a blue-mountain-decorated can of Coors Light.” Her memoir’s impact would be improved with additional editing, and a chapter on Zachry’s older daughter’s academic achievements feels extraneous.

A harrowing tale of coping with mental illness that’s in need of additional editing.