To say I was disappointed in "No Crying in the Operating Room" would be an understatement. I was expecting this book to be one I could not put down. Instead, I struggled to make my way through this very short book. There were times where I was so bored that I contemplated not bothering to finish it.

The author was very detached. The title made me think that this would be an emotional account of her time as an international relief doctor. Instead, it was matter of fact and almost cold at times. I found it especially callous how she discussed some of her patients in the US. At one point she mentions waiting for someone to die to free up the bed for another patient. How sad for a doctor to not only feel this way but then to feel comfortable sharing that with the world.

This book lacked organization. I am familiar with the memoir genre, so I appreciate that it is not necessarily told in a linear fashion. However, there seemed to be no system for why the author told a story when she did - jumping back and forth in ways that were quite confusing.

There were also things that were contradictory - author had a good childhood except her mom beat her, she cut off her family but she's close to her brother. Those things could have been easily overlooked had the rest of the book been more engaging.

The author took several trips overseas working in Haiti, Sudan, etc. Working with Salvation Army and Doctors without Borders as well as working in US hospitals. For her service we are extremely grateful, but I think this depiction of her career was severely lacking. The fact that it took me 10 days to finally finish reading 163 pages says it all!

Dr. Wang's book gives us an inside view of being a doctor on the front-lines -- both in the US during Covid-19 crisis in 2020 as well as administering health care in Haiti and Southern Sudan. Her book describes harrowing conditions in the field as well as choices health care teams need to make with limited supplies and inadequate water and pain medication. This book is also part memoir about her and her family coming to America as immigrants from Taiwan and facing racism. Her mom was physically abusive to her and so in the end this is book about overcoming trauma and obstacles to serve others. I have great admiration for the work healthcare workers like her do to heal and save lives.

Thank you to Netgalley and BooksGoSocial for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

3.5 Stars
Cecily Wang writes with honesty about how she became a doctor, her relationship with her mother, and her experiences volunteering in Haiti, Syria, and South Sudan. She begins her memoir by writing about her strong feelings concerning practicing medicine in the U.S. versus her experiences overseas. Despite her misgivings, she loves being a doctor and continually practices in both worlds.

The author's memoir is interesting, but I had hoped to read more about her overseas experiences. I enjoyed what I read about her volunteering in other countries and what she wrote about being a member of Doctors Without Borders. Her personal letters at the end of the book were also heartfelt and endearing.

When Cecily Wang was growing up, her mother dreamed of an easy life for her—one with fewer challenges and more luxuries; one in which she could perhaps have a family and a part-time job and busy herself with artistic pursuits. But Wang wanted more—she wanted to be a doctor, and once she was a doctor (a surgeon), she wanted to push herself beyond the norm in the US. Off to Haiti she went, then, Haiti and South Sudan and Syria and wherever she could go while juggling the pay-the-bills medical jobs in the US with relief work through the Salvation Army and, later, Médecins Sans Frontières.

"No Crying in the Operating Room" chronicles some of that journey—the disconnect that Wang felt between the way medicine works in the Global South and the way it works in the US and the expectations that patients have when resources are vast versus those when resources are scarce; also the disconnect between the way she envisioned her future and the way her mother envisioned her future.

The structure of the book feels a bit unresolved to me, but Wang is precise (as you might expect from a surgeon) with her language and assessments. (Also, sometimes, funny in a way that is so dry that I almost missed it—measuring the sterility of a conflict-zone operating room by the number of flies and concluding that no flies meant that "it's possible that the room cannot support life" (loc. 839)...) I'm not a medical (or relief) worker, but I'm fascinated by the ins and outs—and pitfalls—of medical relief work, so I appreciated reading about her experiences working in various far-flung places. Again, a disconnect or dichotomy: this is the work Wang feels most called to and where she feels most useful, but relief work is by definition not meant to be sustainable, and the medical jobs through MSF are generally only meant to be short-term placements. In any case, this makes for a thoughtful addition to the subgenre.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
This is a fascinating look at internation aid groups, such as Doctors Without Borders. The comparison between the US healthcare system and how aid is provided in third world countries really shows how red tape and administrative policies hurt the ability to care for patients. Also, the third world country's patients are so much more grateful.