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A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
by Stephanie Foo
A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life.
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.
Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.
What are you reading this week (1/2/2025)?
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo. She's a very talented writer.
-Sarah_Mentzer
"Foo, radio journalist and former producer of This American Life, recounts her astounding story of living with complex PTSD (C-PTSD)...What takes this brilliant work from a personal story to a cultural touch point is the way Foo situates her experiences into a larger conversation about inter-generational trauma, immigration, and the mind-body connection. This is a work of immense beauty." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Foo's writing is shrewdly insightful. In telling her story so compellingly, she joins authors such as Anna Qu and Ly Tran in adding nuance to the 'model minority' myth, if not actively subverting it. Highly recommended." - Library Journal (starred review)
"As Foo sheds necessary light on the little-discussed topic of C-PTSD, she holds out the hope that while 'healing is never final…along with the losses are the triumphs' that can positively transform a traumatized life. A sharp, insightful, and stirring memoir." - Kirkus Reviews
"Many trauma survivors struggle to describe the seemingly indescribable sense of carrying something intangibly sharp—something there but not there—inside. But in What My Bones Know, Stephanie Foo details that and more. Her achingly exquisite memoir takes us on a journey through complex trauma, illuminating her path of self-discovery and providing real hope for those who long to heal." - Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
"Stephanie Foo's incredible memoir speaks to so many things at once: the horrors of an abusive childhood, the enduring power of trauma, the messy science of the brain, and the lifelong search for meaning and healing. Funny and tragic, unflinchingly honest and relentlessly hopeful, What My Bones Know is a marvel of a book." - Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes
"Foo's journalistic eye serves her generously through a hard-won examination of trauma and its aftermath. I cried while turning the pages; I knew that I was witnessing an astonishing literary endeavor. For others who live with C-PTSD, this is a crucial, life-changing book." - Esmé Weijun Wang, New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias
This information about What My Bones Know was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stephanie Foo is a writer and radio producer, most recently for This American Life. Her work has aired on Snap Judgment, Reply All, 99% Invisible, and Radiolab. A noted speaker and instructor, she has taught at Columbia University and has spoken at venues from Sundance Film Festival to the Missouri Department of Mental Health. She lives in New York City with her husband.
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