Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) Calendar

"What My Bones Know" Book Club

Apr 24, 2026   4:00 - 5:00 pm  
WRC | 616 E Green St, Suite 213
Social/Informal Event
Event flyer with a tan/beige background. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Student Affairs logo appears in the top left, and 'Women's Resources Center' is displayed in purple in the top right. On the left, large bold white text reads 'Book Club,' with a note below in dark purple: 'Limited free copies available. Register to reserve your copy.' In the center, the book cover for 'What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma' by Stephanie Foo is displayed — a purple cover featuring an illustrated arrangement of bones, tropical flowers, and leaves. To the right of the book, event details read: April 24, 2026, 4:00–5:00 PM, at the WRC. A QR code is shown with the registration link go.illinois.edu/WhatMyBonesKnow. Fine print at the bottom states the program is open to all eligible persons regardless of gender, race, color, or national origin, and that reasonable accommodations are available upon request.
Sponsor
Women's Resources Center
Registration
Register for a free copy of the book.
Contact
Gabby Schwartz
E-Mail
wrcadvocacy@illinois.edu

Join the WRC for a powerful discussion on  "What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma " by Stephanie Foo and the Women's Resources Center 616 E. Green St, Ste 213.  

Friday, April 24, 4 -5 PM @ WRC 

Limited copies of the book will be given to participants who register & attend the discussion. Priority will be given to student participants (undergraduate & graduate).

Book Club is open to all eligible persons regardless of gender, race, color or national origin. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request, please contact womenscenter@illinois.edu. 

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Book description:

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

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