2024-2025 Common Read
This guide serves as a curriculum support guide for instructors to incorporate themes from our School's Common Read into their courses. The Common Read is a signature, School of Education and Human Development-wide event that provides opportunities for school-wide discussion. The Office of DEI and EHD’s Diversity Action Committee are proud to announce the 2024-2025 Common Read: What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo. Related readings are mapped to our School's program areas.
Book description: 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. 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.