Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know. 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 in 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.
This book talk and reading happened at Politics and Prose book store in Washington D.C. In the video, Foo chats with Kat Chow, a writer and journalist. Chow was a reporter at NPR, working on the Code Switch team.
1. The author is outwardly successful but inwardly suffers. She states, "Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know." In what ways did the author’s generational trauma manifest itself?
2. How does repeated trauma change our epigenome? Does the author’s explanation make sense to you? Why or why not?
3. What did you learn from this book about the concept of Complex-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or C-PTSD?
4. For you, what was the most challenging part of the author’s journey? Why?
5. Did you re-read any passages? If so, which ones?
6. The author goes to great lengths to learn “what her bones know.” What unique resources does she leverage to help her heal and what widely accessible tools does she offer to others who’ve experienced generational trauma?
7. What surprised you most about the author’s journey?
8. What was missing and what do you wish was included? 9. Are there any lingering questions from the book you are still thinking about and if you could ask the author anything, what would it be?
Thank you to our Theisen's for the $1000 grant to purchase copies of the book for our 2025 Dubuque County Reads program.