Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Between Two Kingdoms (A Memoir of a Life Interrupted)
By: Suleika Jaouad
Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad (American author, and motivational speaker.)
Suleika Jaouad offers a guide to veterans of life. Jaouad’s book goes on a little too long, but its message resonates with some who feel challenged by the life they live. “Between Two Kingdoms” is about living and dying. Whether one is a child or adult living through war or peace, Jaouad offers a guide for survival.
Every person faces challenges in their life.
Jaouad contracts leukemia, a frequently fatal cancer that affects the production and function of blood cells. Jaouad recognizes her challenge is a combat between the kingdoms of living and dying. Like any veteran of life, Jaouad’s experience affects her life, even after diagnosis of remission. Jaouad’s recovery from cancer will resonate with the old and young, veterans of war, and every person of any age coping with memories of their experience.
Whether one is in their childhood, twenties, middle age, or seventies, they are living between two kingdoms, i.e., the kingdom of living and the kingdom of dying.
Jaouad’s story is highly personal. The first chapters reflect on a twenty something young woman just beginning her independent life. She has the personal experiences of many young adults making their way in life. Her sexual relationships and personal achievements are similar to many people of her age. What strikes a listener about her self-understanding is its universal applicability. The only difference is in what triggers that self-understanding. Triggers come from the circumstances of life. The trigger may be cancer, the experience of war, the loss of a loved one, a psychological trauma, or physical injury.
Jaouad explains how she psychologically and emotionally copes with her cancer.
In that explanation, a guide is offered to every person who struggles with unexpected traumas in their life. Trauma takes many forms that Jaouad explains may be both physical and mental. She shows the physical consequence of leukemia but also the mental consequence of dealing with it, dying from it, and (in her case) recovering from it. It is in the dealing part that a listener will find the most value.
Jaouad is helped by America’s medical system but a great deal of her ability to cope is based on others’ help.
She is supported by her mother and father, an intimate boyfriend, and patients in the hospital in which she is treated. The boyfriend, also in his twenties, sticks with her through the first years of treatment. The hardship of treatment overwhelms the boyfriend’s capacity to deal with what Jaouad is going through. The relationship breaks down and the boyfriend leaves. As Jaouad begins recovery, after remission, she meets a jazz musician who becomes quite famous. The former boyfriend returns to try and mend their relationship but fails.
Before Jaouad marries, she chooses to see America by traveling with a small dog and lecturing on what she has learned from her leukemia ordeal.
Jaouad has always aspired to be a writer and has kept a diary of her life. She became a professional writer and lecturer.
Jaouad eventually marries the jazz musician. Jon Batiste, former band leader and musician on Stephen Colbert’s late night TV show.
“Between Two Kingdoms” is an enlightening story of Jaouad’s very personal life. Every generation may find something in her book that may help them cope with their lives.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 