Between two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Fri, 05/07/2021 - 7:18pm by marianaroo

I first encountered Suleika Jaouad years ago looking for information on cancer. She wrote a blog from her hospital bed on her experience about being a young adult with cancer, she was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia at 22 years old and was receiving chemotherapy and later a bone marrow transplant. I remember eagerly awaiting for her blog, published every week on the Well section of the New York Times. This beautifully written memoir is the result of that journey. It is an honest recount of her life, her experiences and thoughts in the kingdom of sickness and in the kingdom of wellness. The title of this memoir comes from Susan Sontag's book Illness as Metaphor: "Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place,". I devoured Jaouad's book in two days, gripping read all the way to the end. It challenges us to self-reflect.