Review: "Bloodlines" by Tracey Yokas

Bloodlines by Tracey Yokas
Published May 2024 via She Writes Press
★★★

Yokas's life was upended when her daughter got sick—anorexia and depression that would leave the family scrambling for answers and solutions and her daughter shuttled from one programme to another. In Bloodlines, Yokas describes her experience with that scramble: fear and trauma and figuring things out; learning a new language for what her daughter was going through and trying to make it clear to her husband that mental illness was not a choice and not their daughter trying to punish them; wrestling with what it means to be trying to get your child through an eating disorder when you are still struggling with your own relationship with your body.

I appreciate the note at the end where Yokas says, directly and clearly, that she had her family's permission to tell this story—not that I had reason to think otherwise, but memoir is a tricky thing; there's the rare person out there who can write a memoir that is only about themselves (like...I've read more than one memoir by people who went and marooned themselves on desert islands), but mostly memoir involves telling not only parts of your own story but, necessarily, parts of other people's stories. Sometimes the line of what is yours to tell and what is not is crystal clear; sometimes it is fuzzy. I'm always glad when writers recognize and address that balance, whether that means seeking permission or intentionally leaving out details that might affect other people. (And, well. Sometimes it means addressing it and then telling your full story anyway. I cannot really relate, but I am quite certain that there are times when it is the best option.)

The book moves through something of a frenzied desperation to fix things, and despair, and eventually an unsettled acceptance that you can't fix everything...and sometimes, compromise is the best you can hope for, and that's okay. The book takes place (more or less) in California, though to me it felt inexplicably midwestern. It's straightforward writing, but I think it's at its most interesting when Yokas talks about knowing something intellectually but having trouble applying it in real life—knowing that a child struggling with an eating disorder probably doesn't need to see a parent on a diet, knowing that asking kids to censor themselves when talking about their family with outsiders is not a sign that all is well—because that's something that we probably all come up against at some point or another (or all the time!), but it's not something I see written about all that much.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.