![The following book covers against a maroon background](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F99e39a84-3f4a-466b-a101-f2ae116f0996_6912x2400.png)
Oh hello beloveds,
Last week I shared a quick story from a medical setting. It took me a long time to be ready to write about my experiences with medicine, which is not uncommon for those of us who encounter a healthcare system that very often creates and perpetuates trauma.
The following books helped make me ready to share my own story. And each of us has an important story to tell.
Maybe they’ll help you feel ready to share your story, too.
Remember! You can find any books I recommend on my Bookshop.org affiliate page. It helps support local bookshops, and helps support me. Cute! Each of these titles is also available at my sweet local library and/or the Libby/Overdrive apps, and probably yours, too.
Without further ado, let me freak out about some books.
![The two Kate Bowler covers included on the list: Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) and No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F49f89519-52ab-4a2d-8b49-f7f118679cdf_1538x2325.jpeg)
![The two Kate Bowler covers included on the list: Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) and No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8c15ece-4202-4e2c-a1fb-d3ce6598cb45_398x614.jpeg)
If we’ve spent any length of time together, I have probably mentioned Kate Bowler. I am an avid follower of the Kate Bowler Cinematic Universe. I first came to know her work while she taught about the prosperity gospel at my university—the prosperity gospel referring to the type of (mostly American) Christians whose rhetoric ensures “health, wealth, and happiness” to people who follow Jesus. Prof. Bowler had researched and interrogated this for years (and published two other great works about it) but when she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer as a very young person, she realized that she had been living with her own kind of prosperity gospel, one most of us believe in implicitly. If I am good, if I do life “right,” bad things won’t happen to me. Good things will.
These two memoirs tell the story of her experience grappling with these feelings while interacting with a healthcare system that is at times slow and speedy, callous and compassionate. These books changed my life. I can’t recommend them enough.
![The cover of Chanel Miller’s book, Know My Name: A Memoir](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9a79eee4-9366-4d28-a19b-78e6f308a593_400x613.jpeg)
Chanel Miller is an artist, activist, and writer. She was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner at a party at Stanford in 2015. The anonymous open letter to Turner that she published via Buzzfeed became a cornerstone for many of us to understand sexual assault as an intersectional political issue, building coalitions that came to a head during the #MeToo movement and has only continued to grow in the face of sexual violence in our own country and around the world.
I read Miller’s anonymous letter just before I left for college. I read her memoir just as I was leaving college. It (I’m going to keep saying it!) absolutely changed my life. Her writing is transcendent. I’m including it on my list of medical memoirs not because it is one explicitly, but because of the spare, truthful telling of her experience receiving care in a medical setting after assault.
![The cover of Suleika Jaoud’s Between Two Kingdoms: a memoir of a life interrupted](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F729854ad-84c6-4323-a2ac-faa374bba7d8_1240x1874.jpeg)
I came to
‘s work by way of the beautiful documentary about her and her partner, Jon Baptiste. I feel embarrassed by this! Not because Jon Baptiste doesn’t rock (he’s so cool, omg) but because Suleika Jaouad is SO FREAKING COOL, OMG! Jaoud wrote “The Isolation Journals” for the New York Times as she experienced cancer treatment at a young age. This book beautifully renders that story in more detail—the way being a young person receiving cancer care disrupts a life—and how Jaouad spent years reclaiming her understanding of herself, her body, and her life.Oh! And the writing is absolutely incredible. Am I going to say it? Yeah. Changed my life.
![The cover of Sunita Puri’s book, That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd9546637-951a-4314-9aec-96d7b2738971_1835x2775.jpeg)
I feel sorry not sorry that I don’t have a ton of medical doctors on this list…because I have encountered precious few medical doctors in my life who understand the fragility and beauty of human bodies! But Sunita Puri, a palliative care physician, is ONE OF THEM.
I read this book far before I started caring for my friend Charles during the end of his life within the L’Arche community, and before a dear friend experienced end of life care for her partner. I can trace so many of our conversations, questions, pondering, and feelings back to the way Dr. Puri reframed what our priorities need to be when we’re supporting someone at the end of their life.
So, would you say, that changed my life? I think, in fact. Yes!
![The cover of Sarah Polley’s book Run Toward the Danger: confrontations with a body of memory](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1cea3222-ade4-4faf-9c4b-de2044f35d14_298x450.jpeg)
I have to be honest, here: Sarah Polley’s first full chapter is about her experience with childhood scoliosis. I had to start and stop it about five times. But I think part of me knew that it was going to be important to my understanding of myself to read Polley’s experience with the same thing I experienced as a child. (And thus…changed my life!)
I love Sarah Polley’s work as a director (especially Women Talking!) and I loved her writing here. She details several medical experiences: childhood scoliosis, yes, and her experience with concussion treatment. She also details her experiences as a very young person in the entertainment industry. Having read this and (bonus rec!) I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy this year…whew.
We did it!
What are your favorite medical (or medical-ish memoirs)? What’s changing your life these days? Tell me about it.
Take care, sweet friends.
With love,
Liddy
![The titles listed in the article stacked on a yellow cushion in the author’s home](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdcfa342a-a54b-4953-9fef-9349bf3834ef_5712x4284.jpeg)
PS: Eagle eyed readers will notice this went out a day late. I blame Maggie Rogers, ethereal being who enchanted me on the summer solstice eve this week:
![Left: an image from a stadium concert of Maggie Rogers singing at a piano: right: the author and her sister pose with the stage behind them before the start of the concert](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd45b7046-8a5e-45f0-9581-8f7a13267f78_4032x3024.jpeg)
![Left: an image from a stadium concert of Maggie Rogers singing at a piano: right: the author and her sister pose with the stage behind them before the start of the concert](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a3178d9-ea30-4cc2-9108-b37401e71192_4032x3024.jpeg)
PPS: The Substack gods have decided this email is too big to record via voice over. I will record the copy that stays on my page!
Thanks for curating this list, Liddy. And, for the record, seeing you share your medical stories has been a big influence in encouraging me to share my own.