2024 FYE Summer Reading
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad
Check out this page for ways to engage with Suleika Jaouad's Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted and to connect with Skidmore faculty, staff, and fellow students in this process. We’ll be adding additional content to the page over the summer, so check back to see what’s new!
About the book
We're excited to announce that the summer reading for the Class of 2028 is Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad. Jaouad’s poignant memoir has spent 22 weeks on the New York Times
bestseller list and chronicles her time in the kingdom of the sick, the kingdom of
the well, and her passage through the liminal space between these two worlds. Through
Jaouad’s story of strength, survival, and resilience, readers will consider the meaning
of friendship, community, and creativity and how to live in the present given the
uncertainty of the future.
Essays and reflection
BY LARRY M. JORGENSEN, PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF PHILOSOPHY | Some of Suleika Jaouad’s memoir’s most beautiful moments are scenes between Suleika and her partner, Will. Their relationship illustrates the deep value of care and support in difficult times but also raises a difficult question: What should we do when love does not survive?- BY LAURIE RABINOWITZ, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION STUDIES | As a former elementary educator and current teacher educator, what stands out to me the most in Jaouad’s (2021) Between Two Kingdoms is the author’s longing for representation. Throughout the work, Jaouad yearns for the narratives of other young adults who have had cancer. I was especially struck when she discusses binge watching a Kate Hudson movie called A Little Bit of Heaven (Kessell, 2011). This is not the type of media one would expect someone to connect deeply with.
- BY TILLMAN NECHTMAN, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY | In her memoir, Jaouad grapples with this same lament, namely the truth that only the profoundly sick can fully appreciate the comparative value of genuine healthiness. She’s not unlike Moses after he comes down from Mount Sinai. In receiving the Ten Commandments, he’s come too close to the face of Eternity. It’s an exposure that’s changed him and left him radiant with a deeper wisdom. Jaouad is similarly radiant.
- BY REBECCA MCNAMARA, ASSOCIATE CURATOR, TANG TEACHING MUSEUM | Learning about a stranger’s anguish and suffering can feel like voyeurism, even when that stranger invites us in. When reading Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, I repeatedly wanted to turn away rather than trespass on such intimate details in her battle with cancer. So many of us are un-practiced at engaging in someone else’s bodily pain, with their mortality — with visiting the kingdom of the sick when we are in the kingdom of the well.
- BY CHARLOTTE D’EVELYN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MUSIC | I have spent over a decade studying musicians at the Mongolia-China border and have a keen interest in ethnic and cultural in-betweenness. With this scholarly orientation, I found myself immediately probing questions about the betweenness suggested by the title of Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms.
- BY YELENA BIBERMAN-OCAKLI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE | This is the age of difficult conversations. Some are ready for them, very ready. Others are not. They would say anything, do anything, to avoid them. Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms is one such conversation. It is about illness, pain, death, the burden of hope.
- BY ANGELA VALDEN, STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING | Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted is a testament to the power of telling one’s own story and seeing oneself in someone else’s – a foundation for connection that is as essential to survival as any other basic human need.
- BY BROOKE PARADISE, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF STUDENT AFFAIRS FOR INCLUSION AND ENGAGEMENT | With each struggle Jaouad presented in this book, I found myself healing, taking her words, and applying them to my own life’s metaphorical cancer. I realized I have been too focused on absolutes—either I have moved on and everything is fine, or I am stuck, and nothing can ever improve. However, Jaouad reminds us that life is not so black and white. Because of this book, I have given myself permission to live in the middle terrain.