Jenny Jaeckel's 3 favorite reads in 2023

For me, this is the new Bible for healing from complex trauma.

First off, Foo offers a spoiler alert: that the book has a happy ending. She also invites the reader to skip the pages (if it’s triggering) where she describes her abusive childhood, resulting in her complex PTSD, and then maps out her journey to recovery (still in process), bringing a brilliant journalist’s eye view to numerous therapeutic approaches and the individual’s context in widespread generational trauma.

I loved this book because Foo is extremely funny, brave, brutally honest, and a riveting storyteller, and because it helped me understand my own history. 

Between Two Kingdoms describes the author’s personal journey through leukemia in her early twenties and a hundred-day road trip to survive her own survival.

From the harrowing landscapes of hospital interiors to the Grand Canyon and the Rio Grande to the depths of the human heart. Jaouad introduces us to the forest of people she meets (loves, collides with, loses) on her epic and ephemeral path, bringing us into the powerful and fragile network of relationships she lives within.

I loved this book because, for me, it cut straight to the core of the mystery of being alive and because I quite literally could not put it down. 

Both memoir and communal history, this book is an homage to the author’s extraordinary mother, who became an entrepreneur in an underground economy during a time when virtually all other opportunities were denied her because of the color of her skin.

Against all odds, Fannie Davis uplifted her family and community by earning her living as a numbers runner, supporting Black life in the time of red lining--a story that illuminates the tragedy and triumph inherent in such an enterprise.

I loved this book because it taught me about an important slice of American history and because it is a testament to the power of women in general and Black women in particular.