Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad

I always find it difficult to review a memoir. How does one comment on another person’s life experiences? Often, if it’s well written and when I find myself relating to and/or learning from a memoir – then I can go from there.

Such was the case with Between Two Kingdoms. Ms. Jaouad is best known for her Emmy-award winning column titled “Life Interrupted”. Her writings have been featured in many magazines and she has appeared on NPR. And finally, she is featured in Jon Batiste’s documentary “American Symphony” — but more on that later*.

You might question, like I did, if you really want to read about a young woman’s experience with cancer. So, I entered the book gingerly, but quickly found her story captivating and both devastating and uplifting in equal measures.  

Ms. Jaouad tells of her leukemia diagnosis at just 22 years of age and the toll this disease took not just on her life, but also on the lives of her family, friends and her relationship with a wonderful man.   But despite all of those things, she was a survivor ready to pick up where life left off.  Rather than succumb to depression, instead she picked herself up and took steps to actively re-engage in life (a study guide for anyone).

Her writing is beautiful and brave as she shares how the cancer ravaged her body. Her writing is painfully honest and — fair warning — she does not shy away from sharing the details. I never thought it possible to write poetically about nausea – but she does. One can certainly see why she is a respected reporter.

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick,” Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor. “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.

But it’s not all gloom and doom, Ms. Jaouad also has an adventure story. While a patient in Sloan Kettering, she wrote articles about her real-time experience fighting cancer which were published in her New York Times column “Life Interrupted”. This fame sparked a correspondence with other cancer warriors across the country. In an adventuresome exercise, when Suleka’s health improves she takes off on a 100-day 15,000 mile car ride across the country to visit some of these people whom she had become to know. This road trip is full of surprises, warm meetings, and much bad driving.

Between Two Kingdoms is not only marvelous storytelling, it is also an insight into one woman’s struggle to make sense of a world that seems impossibly and devastatingly uncertain. Ms. Jaouad gives her experience eloquence without shying away from the hard truths.

All of us have experienced cancer – either your own or a loved one’s. If you’re like me, you’ll perhaps find that Ms. Jaouad’s memoir deepens the way you view sickness, recovery…and the importance of loved ones throughout the battles. In the end, this memoir is an uplifting celebration of life – as they say through sickness and in health.

* N.B. “American Symphony” is a Netflix documentary about musician, Jon Batiste, who sets out to compose a symphony. But, Ms. Jaouad, his life partner, learns that her cancer has returned. The documentary showcases the portrait of these two artists at a pivotal crossroads in their relationship and their respective creative journeys. Well worth watching – with a box of tissues nearby — and his music is just wonderful.