Harvard Authors Spotlight: Dr. Anthony Chin-Quee ’05

In a world of hectic work culture, where each person is vying to reach some version of success, it is not often that our role models remind us to slow down and take stock of our lives to change them for the better.

Dr. Anthony Chin-Quee, however, does just that in his memoir, “I Can’t Save You.”

Given his lifelong interest in performing and storytelling, Chin-Quee’s masterful and poignant recounting of his time in medical residency comes as no surprise. This memoir is Chin-Quee’s public debut into the writing world, and his story touches on how the trials of his experience in medical school and residency urged him to prioritize his happiness.

Chin-Quee’s memoir details transformative moments in his life, from graduating from medical school to completing his medical residency. He writes about the entire spectrum of a doctor’s experience, from the exhilaration of seeing patients on his own for the first time to the racial, mental, and physical struggles of residency. Chin-Quee is unafraid of shying away from the truth of the rigors of medical training.

However, unlike most authors of medical memoirs, Chin-Quee deliberately chose not to promote the overly optimistic message that “despite [how] hard it gets, medicine will always pull you through,” he said. Instead, Chin-Quee focuses on how his struggles in residency challenged him to confront his past and find a way to reclaim joy in his life.

In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, Chin-Quee described his inspiration for writing his memoir, citing a lack of medical non-fiction writing that mirrored the truths of his own experiences in medical school and residency.

“If I’m gonna tell this story, which I think would be helpful for folks who come through this,” said Chin-Quee, “then I gotta be honest about what it is and how it’s been, even if it means I would never get another job in medicine again.”

Chin-Quee praised the inspirational quality of physician memoirs and works of fiction that focus on medical school, but he felt that the depictions of medical school and residency did not match his experience. Despite growing up with a love of reading fiction and telling stories, Chin-Quee did not want to fictionalize his story by ascribing his experience to a made-up character.

“If I were [to do] this under an assumed name, there’s no bravery in that for me,” he said.

His memoir aims to highlight the not-so-glamorous side of medicine, though his main purpose is not to warn his readers away from the profession.

Chin-Quee uses this work to share the reality of the messiness of the medical training experience and to speak to those who, like him, felt alone in their experience. In his book, Chin-Quee speaks candidly about residency’s effects on his mental health, discussing his struggles with depression throughout residency. Chin-Quee even delves into mental health struggles in his family history, exploring them in light of how medicine’s efforts to drive him to “rock bottom” allowed him to recognize the ways in which he needed to take care of his mental health.

“The way in which the medical journey destroyed a lot of parts of me that I thought were really important,” said Chin-Quee, “ended up being what allowed me to start over from scratch.”

Chin-Quee reflected on how during his time in residency, he stifled the parts of himself that were still important to him. His interests in singing, acting, dancing, and writing — some of which he pursued at Harvard through Ghungroo, a capella, and CityStep — were muted in the name of facing his responsibilities.

During a depressive episode in residency, Chin-Quee decided to recover those lost parts of himself. Chin-Quee said that he decided to “keep track of moments that [he] realized were sticking with [him]” by journaling his experiences. Chin-Quee describes how creating art again catalyzed a return to his past joys. These journaled moments acted as a foundation for what would later become “I Can’t Save You.”

In an effort to continue the recovery of his past passions, Chin-Quee decided to include various forms of art in his memoir. After compiling these mementos from residency, Chin-Quee asked himself, “How do I use the art to help me tell an important story?”

“The most important thing I learned was that you’ll just be surviving unless you really learn to love yourself,” said Chin-Quee when asked about the biggest lesson he took away from his residency experience.

Though “I Can’t Save You” might appear to be a typical medical memoir, this book is an urgent reminder to prioritize and cherish the joys in life beyond one’s professional future.