Ep. 205 Finding Ways to Heal with Stephanie Foo

Written By Megan Caballero

Stephanie Foo is a writer and radio producer, most recently on This American Life, and she is the author of What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma. Today we talk about Stephanie's journey toward healing from Complex PTSD , fighting model minority stereotype, and the lasting impact of generational trauma.

The Stacks Book Club selection for March is A Mercy by Toni Morrison. We will discuss the book on March 30th with Imani Perry.

 
 

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to the Stacks a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and our guest today is Stephanie Foo the author of What My Bones Know A Memoir of healing from complex trauma. Stephanie is a writer and radio producer, most recently on This American Life. We talked today about how Stephanie approached writing about her diagnosis of complex PTSD as she was working on healing from it, generational trauma and communal healing. The stacks book club pick for March is a mercy by Toni Morrison and we will be discussing the book on the podcast on March 30. With Imani Perry. Okay, now it’s time for my conversation with Stephanie Foo.

All right, everybody, I am here today with Stephanie Foo, the author of what my bones now A Memoir of healing from complex trauma. Stephanie, welcome to The Stacks.

Stephanie Foo 1:46
Thanks so much for having me on the stacks. I really appreciate it.

Traci Thomas 1:49
I’m very excited to talk about your book, I have to admit, I basically knew nothing about complex trauma. So I fear that I may be asking you some really basic rudimentary questions. But I also have a sense that I’m probably not alone. So will you sort of to kick us off, just give folks a like a 30 seconds or so tell them about your book?

Stephanie Foo 2:11
Yeah. So my book is my journey of healing. So getting diagnosed with complex PTSD, which many people don’t know about. That’s not in the DSM yet. And sort of dealing with the shame and pathologizing aspects of that. And going on this whole journey of trying all different therapies, everything from EMDR, to mushrooms to ifs to traveling back to my hometown, and investigating the intergenerational and communal immigrant trauma that me and my community went through, in order to finally come to a place where I feel like I have healed to some degree and, and have come to appreciate in some aspects, my complex PTSD.

Traci Thomas 3:00
Yeah, I mean, this book is really incredible, because you take us on such an intimate personal journey, and also weave in all this very interesting sort of scientific stuff, for lack of a better word by me. And I found that to be really compelling, because we got to not only see, you know, it’s not only a memoir about your experiences, but it’s also sort of this bigger text that kind of brings what you’re experiencing into into a more, I don’t know, clinical, maybe that’s the right word sounds. And I really liked that, because I felt like I was learning about you and about complex PTSD.

Stephanie Foo 3:37
Yeah, I wanted it to be a book where if you were just diagnosed with complex PTSD, and you don’t know anything about it, that you can sort of get all of the basics that you need to know through this book, as well as being led through it with my own personal story so that you know that you’re not alone.

Traci Thomas 3:53
And was that who your audience was? Like, when you wrote this book? Did you sit down and say, I’m gonna write to other people who have been diagnosed with C, PTSD? Or was there an additional audience in mind for you?

Stephanie Foo 4:04
I think that was the central audience. Yeah. I think that when I first was diagnosed, and I was reading books about C, PTSD, they were all so dismal and boring and dry, and usually written by people who did not have complex PTSD. And I wanted there to be something accessible and interesting and real and hopeful. So that basically, if someone was just diagnosed, they could pick this up and they could not feel so deeply pathologized and broken.

Traci Thomas 4:35
Okay. I’m very impressed by you. Because I kept thinking as I was reading this book, if I had just been diagnosed with something, and I had been dealing with something, and then I was also concurrently writing a book about this thing. There’s no way I would write the book. So I sort of want to know what prompted you to kind of write what you are experiencing and going through, like in real time or close to real time?

Stephanie Foo 4:59
I think I pretty much decided that I wanted to write this book very shortly after I was diagnosed because of the lack of literature that I was able to find. I was just like, how is there not a first person story about this? This is ridiculous, their first person stories about depression or anxiety, or, you know, bipolar disorder, and there was just nothing, it was like this total void, which made me feel so deeply isolated at the point where I was, you know, Googling celebrities trying to find is their celebrity with complex PTSD. So I just feel like less of a freak. And so I was like, Okay, if I heal from this, I want to write this book. But also, I was aware, like, that’s if, right, you know, and so I was kind of like, I want to focus on healing, first and foremost. And so while I was healing, while I was going through most of my meditation sessions, and EMDR, and classes and things like that, I was not writing with an audience in mind at all, I don’t think I would have been able to heal. Really, if I had had been doing that. I was mostly writing totally stream of consciousness at the time. Just diary entries for myself in terms of like, what have I learned today? Did I get anything out today? How hopeless do I feel today? It wasn’t until I came to a place where I was much happier and feeling more confident and safe in my diagnosis, that I actually sat down and did the work. And at that point, it kind of felt like just being a journalist in terms of going through the source material of my journals, right? And cobbling that all together to paint a picture of what my experience had been like.

Traci Thomas 6:40
What was that like for you going back through your journals?

Stephanie Foo 6:45
I think at that point, I was feeling much happier and content and like in a good place. And I think a lot of healing from complex PTSD is sort of learning to love yourself and accept where you are and where you were at different stages of your journey. Right. So I think going through the journals, there was a lot of reading, where it was at the time, even if they were really kind of embarrassing, and I was just a hot mess. I was like, My heart went out to that girl. And I was like, Oh, I have so much love for you. I have so much empathy for you. I see where you are. And you’re trying so hard. I had a lot of admiration for her of how hard she was fighting. I think sometimes it was difficult, but there was a lot of it was kind of sweet, almost seeing how far I’d come.

Traci Thomas 7:36
Yeah, I was I was also really rooting for you in the book, I think that you did a really good job of capturing sort of where you were throughout the book. And I definitely could tell as a reader that like there, like that you were experiencing the things that you were saying you’re experiencing, because you know, sometimes you read a book, and you’re like, Okay, you’re telling me a lot, but like, I’m not getting that from the stories you’re sharing, but I was like really, like rooting for you and like cheering you on. And I think that you really captured yourself on the journey so well, which is it’s gotta be hard to do.

Stephanie Foo 8:10
I guess so I don’t know.

Traci Thomas 8:14
I guess you’ve only ever captured yourself. You’ve never tried to capture like a different person. But I don’t know. I’m not a writer. So I’m always really impressed when people do what writing well. I so we grew up, you and I are very close to one another. I’m from Oakland, and my husband’s family’s from Los Altos. So I also really appreciated the section of you driving down to 90 and I was like, I mean to 80 to 80. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I know exactly like where she is and what she’s talking about. And there was so much like little bay area nuggets that I just personally appreciated in the book. It was it was a fun little, you know, it’s always fun when you get to see where you’re from in a book,

Stephanie Foo 8:50
my friend gotten so irritated at me the other day, she’s like, How dare you make me hungry by mentioning that it’s at Factory I’m like, sorry.

Traci Thomas 8:56
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. I actually have a box of it’s in my or fruit in my freezer right now for some, like very random reason. I don’t my husband just bought them during the week of the Super Bowl, and we never got to them. So they’re there. But they’re not the mint ones, which they should be. Okay, I want to know, like, the thing that I was, I think like the most really like blown away by was the generational trauma and the way that you wrote about it and your family. And I’m wondering, what do you think more people should or could understand about generational trauma or what do you think people are getting wrong about generational trauma?

Stephanie Foo 9:41
I think that, you know, it is a combination of nature and nurture. Right. It’s not just that our ancestors are passing on their teachings culturally, which they are of course, but that they are passing it on through our little old jeans. And I think that there has been some evidence that trauma gets passed on through our genes and that like we remain fearful, from generation to generation about certain things that we can be anxious. I mean, you know, Holocaust survivors, genes have been changed to make them more hypervigilant. And their ancestors are sorry, that they’re, what’s the opposite of ancestors the other way?

Traci Thomas 10:24
Their progeny, their progeny.

Stephanie Foo 10:27
yeah, their kids, and then their kids tend to be more hyper vigilant, because you can see that gene marker changed. But it doesn’t necessarily always make us weaker. I mean, these are genetic adaptations designed in order to help us survive, right? It’s, we’re literally evolving, trying to anyway. And so, you know, there is some evidence that, for example, in the Swedish town of over calyx, if you were a boy that was starving around the age of 12, two generations later, your grandchildren might be more likely to survive and be healthier and less likely to have heart attacks, you know? So yeah, our grandparents suffering doesn’t necessarily make us weaker. Right? Right. Right. It can make us more resilient in many ways.

Traci Thomas 11:18
Yeah, I just, I guess I didn’t quite understand how much of it is, can be genetic, like how much of it is passed on whether it makes us stronger or weaker. Like, you have the study about the mice and the cherry blossoms sent in that same section of the book. And that was like a real, I had to take a pause from reading the book and like, write down a bunch of notes. Because, like, the fact that it wasn’t just the next generation, but the generation after that, like grandparents, or whatever that was really, I mean, that’s like, that says a lot, you know, like, that’s like a major thing to understand about who we are and how we become who we are. And I think I always tell the story on the show, but I’m sure you’re familiar. I am black. And so I didn’t know I always thought that black people had a higher risk of heart disease and blood pressure. And it’s true that they do in America. But it’s not true that black people like in Africa and African nations, they don’t. And so that has to do with the experience of you know, racism and prejudice in America. And I just thought was the same kind of thing of like, oh, my gosh, a lot of the things we think that we understand about our bodies are passed down, or we think our genetic aren’t, and a lot of things that we think aren’t genetic, are because of, you know, experience, like experiences. And so that was helpful for me to read about that in your work.

Stephanie Foo 12:40
I think just to comment on that real quick, there’s this Chinese saying that I learned near the end of writing my book, which is, a third of the world is under the control of heaven, a third is under the control of the environment. And the third is in your hands, which I think is really helpful to understand about, especially when you have complex trauma, there can be a lot of shame, a lot of self blame. And you just have to realize that you are a product of your community of your environment of your history of your grandparents history, there’s so much that we do not have control over, which can be sort of distressing at first, but you have to realize that it also like, alleviate some of that self blame and guilt. And you can only take control over what whatever agency you do have and make the best of what you do have. And the rest sort of let it go. You know, right?

Traci Thomas 13:31
Yeah, that’s the hard part, right? Like letting go part of like convincing yourself that you could do that. When are you have you thought about the work that you’ve done in complex PTSD, and sort of the systemic ways that like, as we’re talking about, through our ancestors, and through our families, that these sometimes these things are passed down, whether positive or negative? And I wonder if you’ve thought about any of this, like, more broadly, in the systems that are in place, because you sort of talked about racism can cause PTSD? My guess is that like certain forms of sexism, or homophobia can probably are can also cause PTSD. And I’m wondering if like, there’s ways to extrapolate what you’ve learned that can help to heal some of these bigger, more broad forms of trauma?

Stephanie Foo 14:16
Yeah. How do you heal communal trauma? That’s kind of what you’re asking? Yeah, I think there’s a lot of different things. I think awareness is the first key element. So you know, knowing about my history, knowing about complex PTSD, knowing about the effect that it had on my brain, was what sort of allowed me to go on this journey and sort of when you’re healing from complex PTSD, right, you have to realize, is the threat real or is the threat imagined? And so I think part of grappling with that is thinking okay, I feel triggered or upset right now because I have, you know, historical personal experience with this. Why might I be triggered right now. And is that truly what’s happening here? Right. So I think there are some personal ways that we can deal with it by educating ourselves. I think that tons of systems need to change. I think that, for example, the educational system could do a much better job of, you know, as you were talking about these conflicts weren’t that long ago, Jim Crow wasn’t that long ago, the Vietnam, the Korean wars, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, these were not that long ago. And yet, we really don’t have that much of understanding about how close this is about how our this is what our parents and grandparents survived. And this isn’t just, you know, Korean history or whatever, African This is American history, right? America is why a lot of these conflicts happen. Yes, we were personally invested. This is why we are here right now. So just being able to understand that having our educational system be able to teach that I think is really key. I think our mental health care system is completely broken. It caters to only very privileged, narrow subset of our society, which I think is really messed up. So it should be accessible, it should be less racist in that, like, the methodologies and the therapies that we have, should be able to cater specifically to people of color, and then and they don’t, they’re not culturally responsive. So that’s part of it, I think we are seeing some aspects of a good shift with the pandemic, I think in terms of sort of moving away from this pressure to be completely productive all the time. And being able to bury trauma, with productivity, with financial success with academic success. And I think, moving away from this horrible, highly stratified capitalistic environment that we have, where we have to work constantly and don’t have the time or resources to expand on our mental health and divorce our self worth, from our economic output. You know, that’s, that’s pretty key. So we can do something about that, that would be really helpful.

Traci Thomas 17:24
Please, can we please.

Stephanie Foo 17:27
And then yeah, just I think it’s really important to just talk more about trauma, to normalize trauma, to normalize sadness, and to learn how to take care and love each other better. Because PTSD, complex, PTSD is a relational trauma, it’s about how we relate to each other. And then how you sort of lack trust in other people because of that. I mean, you’re saying, you know, you can develop complex PTSD from experiencing a lot of racism. Okay, well, I guess we need to fix racism, then in order for people to actually feel safe. So how do we learn to treat each other with kindness and respect? And I think that some aspect of that was true in Mott Haven, where you really have this mini society in which you’re educating people how to treat each other, how to listen to each other, how to like resolve conflicts, kindly and empathetically, and how to like love each other, instead of just focusing entirely on rigorous academics. If we had some form of that in our society, I think we would be a lot better off.

Traci Thomas 18:37
Yeah, just for people who haven’t read the book yet. Can you tell them about Mott Haven? That was a really special moment in the book.

Stephanie Foo 18:43
Yeah, I wrote about going to the school in the Bronx called Mott Haven, which has I think about a third of their student population are foster children. So these are children who have undergone a tremendous amount of trauma, and the rest of the population is generally underserved kids who are struggling with poverty. And so it’s just overall, a bunch of kids who have seen a lot of hard stuff. And so the focus of the school is not to get them the best grades, but to give them the most stable learning environment possible, and to sort of give them a really safe, healthy, happy space where they can learn to be good people and who love each other if they don’t have that at home. So a lot of it is learning how to resolve conflicts with friends, learning how to trust each other, not punishing kids, but instead, if they have fights with each other, teaching them how to work those fights out by them with each other and to talk about their feelings. It was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever seen looking at watching these kids who’d suffered through so much, but had so much emotional intelligence because of the school that they went through, they were just so good at saying to each other, like I forgive you, or what’s wrong or expressing their needs, you know? And I was like, Oh my God, if only I had learned this in school, right?

Traci Thomas 20:12
Yeah. It was like a jarring reading experience that part because I was like, what has happened? Like, what is this alternate universe where children are being taught things that are actually relevant to their future life experience, I’ve never heard of such a place. And like contrasting that, against your experience, going back to your high school and all of your teachers basically being like, no, the kids here are totally fine. They’re just like, sometimes have a hard time making our essay sparkle or whatever the phrase was, like, just felt so different, you know. And like, I think that my experience, and probably a lot of people’s experiences are much closer to your experiences in high school like that the teachers weren’t necessarily plugged into what was going on with the kids. Yeah, so that moment really stuck out to me. Do you feel like this book sort of changed from what you set out to write? Like, did you have a clearer idea of what you wanted the book to be when you got started? And is that what I’m holding in my hands?

Stephanie Foo 21:13
Yeah. I think after I had done the majority of my, like, my healing and research kind of, right before I started seeing Doctor harm, but after I had everything else, I wrote an outline of the book. And it was really based on I, well, I went through the collected schizophrenia is, by is made way Dunhuang, obviously, and then I just really kind of mapped it out. And I wanted it to be a mix of science and personal stories, I thought hers was pretty good. I think mine winds up being a little bit more personal, maybe. But I knew that there were a bunch of different big ideas that I had hid in my recovery that I found to be really important for me. And I kind of wanted to get all of those in there. I think the main thing that really changed actually from like my first draft, and first sort of idea of what the book was going to be to now was, I actually might the the first 50 pages of this book are about my childhood and a lot of the child abuse that I endured. And I think in my first draft of it, that part was really short. It was like 10 pages long, okay. Because I think I had just read so many trauma books where you’re immersed in the trauma for most of the book or the entire book. And it can be just really draining and painful. And that’s not to say there isn’t a place for that. That’s there is of course there is. But I just wanted to have mine be mostly about the journey of recovery as an adult, which I don’t think you’ll see as often. Right, right. Because I wanted to provide sort of like a roadmap for people who are about to go on that journey. Because yeah, I had no idea what that would look like. But then my editor was like, you can’t write about a healing journey with nobody understanding what you’re healing from. Right. So they needed to flesh that out. And that was pretty tough.

Traci Thomas 23:22
That’s what editors are good for letting you know, those kinds of things. Right. Like you got it a little more. Yeah. What was the hardest part of writing this book and what came easily?

Stephanie Foo 23:30
Well, one of the easiest parts that barely got edited out actually, and just as kind of like in there almost exactly as it wasn’t its first draft was all of my sessions with Dr. Hum. My therapist. Yeah, because that was almost kind of purely journalistic, because I literally had all of our therapy sessions recorded. And so I went through them and read them and plucked out my favorite bits. And it was like creating a radio story or a piece of journalism. And also, I think going back into those sessions kind of feels like a warm hug. It was really, I loved my therapy sessions. I love my therapist. So that was really fun. The hardest part was the beginning. So, you know, my childhood trauma, I think, what was really difficult about it was that I probably wrote it, like 30 times, it was ridiculous. And so yeah, he’s probably have written like, whatever, 500 pages of me being abused. And it’s ridiculous, because each time I would put it in front of eyes, and they would be like, we can’t feel you at all. Because obviously I’m so dissociated. Sure. And we’re like that’s the only way I can go back and access that is by being dissociated I don’t even quite remember what it really felt like to be that girl put in these like horrific situations where my my parents were threatening to kill me or in some time, sometimes Actually jeopardizing my life. Or, you know, my mom, trying to kill herself and blaming it on me. And I think that the only way that I was finally able to sort of make it happen was to just get in front of it. And you read the book, you know, that certain point. I’m just like, You know what, I have no idea how this felt. Yeah. And fuck you for asking.

Traci Thomas 25:23
Right, exactly. That was my guess of what would have been the hardest part. But I mean, it makes total sense, right? That that would be the hardest part. Yeah. Is there anything that you wish was in the book that is not in the book?

Stephanie Foo 25:40
there were a couple of really cool places that I visited, like Mott Haven that were doing really awesome trauma, particularly with immigrant communities. And I wish that I would had that had made it in there. But I understand why it didn’t, it would have been way too long. So maybe in the second book.

Traci Thomas 25:59
Oh, we’ll get to that. Later. Thank you for that intro. I have to ask you about this. I know that some authors don’t have any relationship to this next question. So you can feel free to tell me that this wasn’t part of your process. But the cover of your book is so incredibly gorgeous. And I just want to know, if you what the process was like, if you were part of it at all? And if not, we can not talk about it.

Stephanie Foo 26:25
No, I was a very big part of it.

Traci Thomas 26:29
Yeah. Okay. It’s just so gorgeous. It seems like it couldn’t exist without the influence of the author. But please tell us about it.

Stephanie Foo 26:35
So I think that there was initially kind of a struggle. I think people didn’t know what, what to put on the cover. And I think some early I mean, really, I for the longest time, I didn’t get any, because my editor kept being like, no, the ones they’re sending me are not good. And then eventually, I got to look at them. And I understood what she was talking about. There was just like, a lot of hands, a lot of tigers, like so many tigers and and I was just like, No, what Tigers have nothing to do with this book. I don’t get it. And then some kind of ones that were like chopsticks and stuff. And I was like, oh, okay, let’s not do that. And it just wasn’t coming together. And my best friend who I write about in the book, Katherine, Katherine Wang. She’s been my best friend. Since the fourth grade, I was complaining about this to her. And she’s an art director, which, like, I never thought to use her for anything. But she was like, I’m going to art direct your book. And so we sat down together, she brought a ton of ideas to the table and ton of book covers. And she asked me, Do you like this? Do you like this? Do you like this? We made these mood boards. And she really thought about like, Okay, if we were to use the image of bones, what would you want alongside them? Because I know you don’t want anything to be spooky or look like it’s gonna be a mystery thing, or like a death thing. And I was like, Yeah, I think if there were bones, the only way to make it feel like there’s a lot of life and hope to it is just to put lush, lush, lush flowers and plants just to make life springing from these bones. And a lot of plants that are like really important to me in terms of on the cover, actually, there’s you know, there’s Ron batons, and there’s mangoes. And there’s wood sorrel from California. So I made I kind of mocked up a couple of covers that looked quite a bit like this. And then they gave it to a real professional and and made this may look like classy.

Traci Thomas 28:38
Well, it’s incredibly gorgeous. And I I mean, so far, it is my favorite cover. I’ve seen this year of books that are out or books that are coming. I just it’s like, oh, breathtaking. I think it’s so beautiful. Like, I it’s I mean, I just love it. I love it so much.

Stephanie Foo 28:56
Wow, that’s so nice of you to say, Oh, I can’t so true.

Traci Thomas 29:00
Please do. Please do tell her thank you for creating it with you. Because it’s just it’s really I mean, like it gives me it makes me feel things. So I just I love it.

Stephanie Foo 29:09
We’ll turn to the designers Grace hon. Oh, okay, amazing.

Traci Thomas 29:12
Before we dive into sort of a little bit more about your process and how you work I do. I want to make sure that I asked you about this because this came up in the book, I believe it was see Pam Jiang who’s whose essay you mentioned about writing about her experiences and some trauma there. And you sort of get to this a little bit in the book about, you know, the experience of being of Asian immigrant families and talking about trauma and how that sort of taboo, and I’m wondering, you know, like for you how you were able to work through some of that stuff, or or was it something that you sort of were able to work through in your therapy and so you didn’t feel the stress or the pressure about talking about it publicly?

Stephanie Foo 29:58
Yeah, I think that I’ve always been sort of the black sheep of my family. And I’ve always been the one who’s who has been yelling and speaking the unspeakable. And so I think part of my comfortable LIS doing this, as is just kind of that I’ve always been doing it. And I’ve always been kind of outcast for it anyway. And so like, I’m like, Well, how much worse could it be? At this point? I don’t have relationships with either of my parents. So I didn’t have to worry too much about their response. My family back home in Malaysia, they’ve only just sort of recently been validating what I went through, I did a story for this American life a few years ago, about my family in Malaysia. And I really worried that that was going to cause a lot of drama or anger with them, but not, not really, they they really supported me. They started saying for the first time after that, and not the book is coming out that they really believe me, for the first time because they sort of denied the abuse that was happening to me for decades. or minimized it or made me feel like it was my fault. And now that it’s like on fancy radio shows or in books, they’re like, oh, maybe it’s it’s real, which is a little frustrating. Right? to, because like, I don’t really need you to validate this now, quite honestly, I think the person who needed it most was the 10 year old me who was being severely abused. They couldn’t she couldn’t use your help. But that’s okay. We all come around things a little late sometimes, I guess.

Traci Thomas 31:49
Right. Is there any? Like I know for me sometimes when I talk about things on this show that are like, black specific that I’m sometimes I get nervous, like of how people who aren’t black will receive or understand it. Did you have any worry about that like about your readers who don’t have similar life experience to you not understanding what you’re saying? Or like extrapolating the wrong stuff? Was that anything that you had to work through?

Stephanie Foo 32:16
Yeah, I did worry about that I worried about there being uncomfortable stereotypes. Yeah. I felt like I ran it by a lot of Asian Americans actually, including kids from my high school. Before I sent it to print, and them saying like, this is true, this was our experience was really helpful. Because I was like, Well, what can I do? This is my personal experience, this was our experience that deserves a voice and how you choose to interpret it. You know, that’s up to you, if you want to see a different voice, give another Asian American author the opportunity to write it, you know, right.

Traci Thomas 32:58
Mm hmm.

Stephanie Foo 32:59
But this is mine. And I’m not responsible for how, whether you choose to believe it’s, it’s valid or not. But also, I think it is countering a very specific stereotype of the model minority. I think the stereotype was of that Asian kids are do really well, academically, we’re really ambitious. And so how could we be suffering from mental illness or generational trauma? Like we figured out a way to to erase the conflicts that brought us to this country in the first place? And I’m like, wait a minute. No, that’s, that’s not right. I mean, people can have both of those narratives in their head if they want. And I encourage them to grapple with that.

Traci Thomas 33:49
Right. It’s so interesting, you said that we’re reading Toni Morrison this month for the book club. And one of the things I love about what Toni Morrison does is that she oftentimes presents, you know, a thing that we think we understand, like a stereotype, if you will, and then she complicates it a lot by being like, okay, but this is also part of that thing. Or this is also like you can have the model minority, but you can’t have it without the fact that so many, you know, parents of children who now are excelling in school went through horrible experiences at refugee camps, or, you know, like, you can’t just have it as it is you have to take it with the truth of the thing. And I think your book does that beautifully of like talking about both the stereotypes that we understand, and also how those stereotypes come to be, you know, and like how there’s a lot more complicated interpersonal experiences that lead to a child feeling like they need to get all A’s right or a parent feeling like they need their child to get all A’s. Even if you know the outcome that you see is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what is happening. underneath, and I think you really do a good job of complicating and also that like, there are plenty of Asian kids who don’t get all A’s. And that’s there too. You know, like, I just, I just think you brought up so much richness and a community that’s so often flattened. So I really appreciated that in your book. Damn, okay, yeah, we’re gonna do sort of a hard turn to your writing experience, which is, how did you know you wanted to write,

Stephanie Foo 35:26
I’ve been writing my whole life. Interestingly enough, I was sort of forced to write. It started writing when I was five, or six, because my mom forced me to write journals, sometimes multiple times a week of my experiences. And they had to be long and very interesting and well written and couldn’t have spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes, or I would get beaten for it. Which is really interesting that what started as something that I was forced to do and abused, because of turned out somehow to be my salvation. And the thing that allowed me to crawl out of that trauma. You know, Cat Chow, pointed out this quote in my book recently, which was something my grandma always used to tell me, when the sky falls use it as a blanket. And I feel like the book is the blanket. But you know, I think in my teens, my early preteens and my teens, I started journaling a lot. And I have pretty comprehensive journals. That whole time of like, I was very, very alone. At that time, I had no one to talk to, my parents couldn’t understand I have no siblings, no family in the United States, no friends. And so this was my confession booth, this was how I got my ideas out. And it’s a safe place for me as an adult is kind of where I talk myself up, I like put down all of my fears about myself, and then counter them with arguments about why I’m wrong. It’s evolved a lot throughout my lifetime, the act of writing,

Traci Thomas 37:16
having it be something that you’ve been doing your whole life, how does it change when you do it professionally? Versus when you do it? You know, to talk yourself up, like, how do you navigate? It’s the same, you know, act of writing, but I’m sure you approach it in really different ways.

Stephanie Foo 37:30
Yeah, I think it’s different. When I have an audience. Of course, I think a lot about plot and what would be interesting to people, and how to, like build suspense. I think, when I write for myself, it’s mostly like feelings. And when I write for an audience, it’s mostly scenes, actually, because I’m a I’m a was a radio journalist for over 10 years. And when you write a radio script is kind of like a film script, in which you have to have like, sort of scene idea, scene idea. And that’s how you build the drama. And you create an image of things in people’s heads. And so I think a lot of putting this book together was thinking of the best scenes of my life, I think, and what would be most compelling, which would illustrate the ideas that I wanted to get across best. Yeah, and it’s kind of reflex for me to at this point. Yeah, I think most of the book in terms of the therapy and stuff, it was pretty easy to come up with those scenes and do that. I think that the only the part that was hardest was like, obviously, the child abuse stuff I was like, which, which incidents of my child abuse would be more most entertaining for the for the reader.

Traci Thomas 38:47
Which of my nightmares is the most compelling to share with strangers. I get that that seems absolutely terrifying. You sort of answered my question about, I had a question for you about sort of, you know, the difference or the similarities between writing a book and working in, you know, Audio Productions. And and I think it’s interesting that you kind of approach approach both by like bias with a scene intention. I actually really like that I love the scene. How do you make time to write Where do you write how often? Do you listen to music? Do you have snacks and beverages? Are you in an office? Are you on a couch? Like can you sort of set the scene for your writing?

Stephanie Foo 39:30
Well, I mean, I think a lot of my writing, like the journaling that I went through when I was healing took place in cafes. Particularly there was, you know, there was one Cafe Milken poll and Bed Stuy that I spent a lot of time like crying in and to the point where they would like give me free scones a lot. But almost this entire book. Yeah, I think the whole book is really written in the pandemic. Wow, it’s So I got my book deal on February 2020. Oh my goodness. 20. Yeah. It was mostly written either in my office if my husband wasn’t working in it or if my husband was working, and then I would work on the kitchen table in this very cramped, messy apartment that we had that was totally falling apart, holes in the walls everywhere. It was like, it was an utter mess.

Traci Thomas 40:25
Oh, no,

Stephanie Foo 40:26
it was okay. We moved in. In February 2020, we actually moved in above my in laws because Joey’s mom was sick and we had moved in to take care of her. So also, there was a lot of, you know, checking in on her and caretaking and then going back up and reading the writing this book, it was pretty complicated.

Traci Thomas 40:51
Do you have any go to snacks or beverages? Do the music any rituals around your writing? Right?

Stephanie Foo 40:56
I don’t really listen to music. I really like it quiet. But I’ll listen to Wasco I think that’s how you pronounce it. Which is just ambient noise music. If if my husband was doing construction on our house, which was happening a lot.

Traci Thomas 41:18
And a lot of Diet Coke. Yes, a woman after my own heart.

Stephanie Foo 41:23
A lot of Diet Coke. And I think during the pandemic, I was cooking a lot and I was feeling really good about it. My go to breakfast would be like maybe breakfast tacos, with either eggs on Nori, or sorry, eggs on rice, with nori and sesame oil or breakfast tacos, with potatoes and mushrooms and eggs, and like crema and on top and salsa. Or, let’s see, I made a lot of Chinese food that I had never had to try to make before by hand, but like nothing was available, and we couldn’t eat any out anywhere. You know, right, right, of course, was a lot of Chinese snacks too. Like, I really like Lay’s potato chips with Asian flavors, like Nori, or my favorite is the spicy crawfish.

Traci Thomas 42:22
I’ve never had that. That’s really good night. Okay, we’ve opened up my eyes. I love a snack, which is why it’s a very important part of this podcast is to make sure everyone gets on record talking about what they’re eating. You’ve passed the test, you’ve given me quite a bunch of things. A lot of people try to be like, Oh, I like celery. And I’m like, No, that’s not gonna cut it around here.

Stephanie Foo 42:41
This was like my one. My sole joy in the pandemic was eating.

Traci Thomas 42:47
So yeah, it’s honestly same eating and cooking. I loved I mean, I still am cooking so much more than I used to, because I just love it. And I’ve always loved it. But having to go back to it. Now I’m like, planning out my meals going to the farmers market like getting things to make and try. Yeah, so you mentioned that when you were a kid you had to write and you had to spell everything correctly. But another really important question that we ask around here is what’s a word you can never spell correctly on the first try? Or are you still a great speller?

Stephanie Foo 43:16
I’m not that good speller. There’s a lot of words that have like a lot of doubles next to each other like bookkeeper or whatever. Use me. It’s horrible. The first the only word that’s coming to mind is like diarrhea. I don’t really know where the H goes a lot of the time.

Traci Thomas 43:34
That’s a great word. And I also have no clue how to spell it. I could probably sit there for 10 minutes and give you 19 different spellings and none of them would be right. I love that. That’s the you win best words so far, ever. We’ve been doing a show for a long time. This question got invented in fall 2019. And you’re definitely the winner right now.

Stephanie Foo 43:57
Yay. Diarrhea,

Traci Thomas 44:00
diarrhea, good luck. Everyone else trying to talk that I guess like writing this in a pandemic, and all that was going on around you with your, with your mother and live in the apartment and everything like how do you preserve and tap into your creativity? How do you hold on to that part of yourself?

Stephanie Foo 44:19
I think people are kind of like, how are you creative? And I think like working on deadline, right? For 10 years where I just had to be like I had to make the story in two days or five days or whatever it is. And you just have to, then there’s no, you so you sit down and you write it. And if it’s crap, then you whatever, it’s there, and then you go back and you look at it again and you revise it and you keep revising it. I mean, I don’t think that I have some secret news that I tap into. I think that my only real tip actually is knowing my sort of circadian clock Well, I know that I’m kind of useless from until, like 11. And so I would mostly just do like boring tasks or whatever, answering emails until like noon. And then I would be really productive from like, noon to six ish. And I love that.

Traci Thomas 45:21
I love that. You think that the deadline thing isn’t a thing. But that’s actually like a really interesting thing that comes up from different authors, depending on their experiences, additional experiences, like some people say like, the deadlines are the thing that that makes them creative, you know, like that they are able to work that way. And then some people say like, the deadlines just totally destroy their lives. So it’s, it’s interesting to hear you talk about that, too. You alluded to this earlier, no pressure. But is there a second book? Do you know what comes next? Can you tell us anything?

Stephanie Foo 45:55
okay, I haven’t done any work on this really.

Traci Thomas 45:59
Okay, except for your book just came out like two weeks ago.

Stephanie Foo 46:02
based on like some of the extra research that I have, for my old book, I would like to do a new book, entitled The Case Against therapy. Basically the case against psychotherapy, talk therapy as we know it, which is not to say that it isn’t helpful for people. I mean, you saw that it was very helpful for me. But yeah, I think there are just a bunch of different therapies, particularly culturally sensitive therapies that we have not explored as much that are really fascinating, and tremendously helpful for people. Like for example, my Google Docs, my talk therapy, even had Google Docs therapy. And that was not traditional in any kind of sense, but it was super helpful for me. And for listeners, that’s where, like me, I transcribed all of my therapy sessions into Google Docs and edit it, my trauma out with my therapist, and just exploring how untraditional therapies have had really huge impacts on different communities, I think is something I really want to do.

Traci Thomas 47:07
that sounds incredible. We all can’t wait no pressure. Take your time whenever you’re ready. For people who loved this book, what my bones know, what would you recommend to them to read? What other books do you think are maybe in conversation or good companion pieces for them?

Stephanie Foo 47:25
The collected schizophrenias obviously, if you want to read really great therapy sessions, more great recollections of what happens in the therapists office. Maybe you should talk to someone, obviously by Laurie Gottlieb. I seen ghosts by Cat Chow. You know, we were writing our books in tandem. So I have to mention that it’s also it also deals with grief and to some extent, intergenerational trauma. I think if you’ve just gotten diagnosed with complex PTSD are really helpful like very gentle kind explanatory first step is journey through trauma by Gretchen Schmelzer. Love that book. I think if you’re really going through a hard time, Pema children is obviously a great salve. And I think in terms of moving away from this obsession with capitalist productivity, and being able to feel your feelings more how to do nothing, so one of my favorite books, and I’m just gonna say braiding sweetgrass, because it’s my favorite book, and I don’t care if it’s in conversation with this, because everyone should just read it. So they’re great.

Traci Thomas 48:42
You’re allowed to buy question is really for you to do whatever you want with. I love it. We love a book recommendation around here. So thank you for those I was really good to you. I was like, professional. Really well done. So this is sort of I guess my second last question, which is just what do you hope folks will keep in mind as they read what my bones know.

Stephanie Foo 49:06
In the beginning, I have a the first page is a trigger warning, essentially. And I know that reading this stuff, particularly, particularly the child abuse stuff can be really difficult. And so I kind of just wanted to underline that like part one of this book, particularly like the first 50 pages are the hardest pages. And if you need to skip over any explanations of abuse in this book, like, feel free, you’re not going to miss anything, just kind of like speed read it or skip over a couple pages, you’ll be okay. If it’s really triggering for you, I am there with you. I get it and just know that like maybe the first 100 pages is like the darkest but then I really tried to be more hopeful and I’m just kind of affirming experiences kind of over and over and over in the book, because I just wanted the reader to be there with me and Okay, and just like I tried to hold your hand as much as possible, like with a kind, loose grip. So just keep that in mind when you’re going through the hard stuff that like it’s going to get softer and warmer, real soon.

Traci Thomas 50:27
That’s very good advice for folks. Last question. If you could have one person dead or alive, read this book, who would you want it to be?

Stephanie Foo 50:36
Who’s the person with the most power to change our mental health system?

Traci Thomas 50:42
Wow, that would be great to know that we could just call that one person and then have stop having to deal with our senators or whatever the

Stephanie Foo 50:49
Biden, I don’t know.

Traci Thomas 50:51
sure. I don’t know if he’s the person but I don’t know. Someone important enough to fix things so we can all get therapy and be taken care of exactly or not get therapy depending on what your next book so

Stephanie Foo 51:02
we various forms that we should get the therapy that’s tailored to us is what we terapy we mean?

Traci Thomas 51:07
Yeah. Well, Stephanie, this has been so great. Thank you so much for coming on. Everyone at home. You can get Stephanie’s book. What my bones No. Now wherever you get your books from your favorite indie from your library. You can get it from libro FM, you can get it everywhere. Stephanie, thank you so much for being here.

Stephanie Foo 51:25
Thank you so much for having me. This was such a fun interview. I really liked the snack part.

Traci Thomas 51:30
I didn’t even pay you to say that. Everyone else we will see you in the stacks.

That does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to Stephanie for being my guest. Remember the next book club pick for March is a mercy by Toni Morrison and we will be discussing the book on Wednesday, March 30. With Imani Perry. If you love the show and want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks, follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram at thestackspod_ on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
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