Ep. 201 The Language of Chronic Illness with Tessa Miller

Written By Wy'Kia Frelot

Today we are joined by Tessa Miller, an author and journalist whose work focuses on chronic illness, disability, and health justice. We discuss Tessa's debut book, What Doesn't Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness - Lessons from a Body in Revolt and how publishing a memoir brought on a whole new level of anxiety and insecurities around being a writer and living with chronic illness. We also talk about graphic language, writing for multiple audiences, and prioritizing books by disabled and/or chronically ill authors.

The Stacks Book Club selection for February is I Live a Life Like Yours by Jan Grue. We will discuss the book on February 23rd with Tessa Miller.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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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. Our guest today is Tessa Miller. Tessa is the author of What doesn’t kill you: A life with chronic illness. She is also a journalist whose work focuses on chronic illness, disability and health justice. We talk today about the insecurities around publishing a memoir, writing about bodily functions and Tess’ favorite gluten free snacks. The stacks book club pick for February is I live a life like yours by Jan Grue and we will be discussing the book on Wednesday, February 23 with this week’s guest, Tessa Miller. Okay, now it’s time to talk with the wonderful Tessa Miller.

Alright, everybody, very excited. I am here today with Tessa Miller, who is the author of What doesn’t kill you: a life with chronic illness lessons from a body in revolt. Tessa, welcome to the stacks.

Tessa Miller 1:50
Thanks, Traci. I’m so excited.

Traci Thomas 1:52
I’m really excited to have you. I have a lot of questions for you. But generally, we sort of always start in this place, which is can you just sort of tell us about yourself? Because I feel like your professional bio, which I have read in the introduction doesn’t really do you justice?

Tessa Miller 2:07
Yeah. So I am a writer, I guess I always feel a little bit weird calling myself because like, I’ve written a book. I feel like I’ve been a few more under my belt before I take on that title. But so my first book came out last year, paperback is coming out. Today, hounds out Yeah. So I spent the last 10 ish years as a journalist in New York, mostly focusing on health and science, but also doing some more like general politics, entertainment, that kind of stuff. Wherever it was kind of needed in the newsroom. I left full time journalism in 2016. Right before the 2016 election, as you can imagine working in journalism, for the lead up to the 2016 election was brutal to say the least. So I became freelance then and just was doing more writing than editing, I used to do more editing. So that’s kind of the professional background. Now I am a graduate student at the City College of New York, which I love shout out to CUNY for giving people access to affordable education. And I don’t have to go into $200,000 of debt to get a master’s degree. So I’m studying language and literacy, which I feel like would be right up your ally Tracy. It’s like it’s part linguistics. And I know that you love like cultish and work. But that’s like a lot of the kind of stuff that I’m studying right now. And then the literacy half is studying theoretical and practical ways to teach and to teach adult learners is what I’m focusing on. So eventually, I’ll probably teach college or maybe like English as a Second Language kind of program, something like that. I’m not quite sure yet. But I also teach writing to undergrads there. And they are adorable. Like, they’re like 18 to 23 ish on the older end. And they roast me literally.

Traci Thomas 4:23
Have they read your book?

Tessa Miller 4:24
Gen Z is something else. Some of them have. Yeah, and I actually have some students who are chronically ill, or disabled. And so you know, sometimes I recommend my book to them so that they know that like, you know, we’re kind of on the same page with that kind of stuff. But yeah, some of them have no idea that I have a book or anything, they just think I’m like some lady teachers.

Traci Thomas 4:47
That’s how I know you’re not like an old teacher, because old teachers always recommend their books. It’s like on the syllabus. It’s like this is a class about puppies. By the way, you need to read my book about chronic illness. It’ll be really the second half of the semester.

Tessa Miller 5:03
I know I have a lot of I’ve had a lot of professors that have done that will be like read my book that came out in 1987 that, you know, is no longer all that relevant. But yes, so that’s kind of the professional side of my life. The personal side is that I live with chronic illnesses, which we’re going to talk about when we talk about the book. So I live with Crohn’s disease, which is an immune disease that attacks my digestive system. And I also live with celiac disease, which I think more people are probably familiar with, because gluten free diets are all the rage, but it’s like an immune response to gluten in the small intestine. So that one’s pretty easily managed with a gluten free diet. And luckily, there’s so many good gluten free snacks now, which we will also talk about later. But Crohn’s, you know, is is notoriously difficult to manage. And so I take immunosuppressants for that, which you know, during a pandemic has been interesting. Yeah, so that’s kind of my my background. I live in Brooklyn. I have four dogs. And a husband. I had two dogs, he had two dogs, we fell in love and got married. So now we have a circus of dogs. And yeah, that’s fantastic. I love rundown.

Traci Thomas 6:33
I love that you are hesitant to say that you’re a writer, even though you’ve had years of experience as a journalist, which to me, I feel like a journalist is a writer is Am I wrong? Am I missing something?

Tessa Miller 6:42
Oh, no, you’re right. You’re right. I just feel like, I don’t know, I think of writer with like a capital W.

Traci Thomas 6:50
Yeah, But like a journalist is definitely you know,

Tessa Miller 6:54
I’ve always, like, introduced myself as a journalist and not a writer. But now I do less particularly hard journalism and more writing. And especially with this book, which was like a combination of journalism and memoir. Yeah. And I even write in the book about how I’m like, not really a journalist anymore. I’m like, kind of, I don’t have like a foot in and a foot out. And so I just always called myself a journalist. And for some reason, when I, when I try to be like, I’m a writer, it just like gets caught. It gets caught in like a-

Traci Thomas 7:31
Not this imposter syndrome Tess, we have to get you out.

Tessa Miller 7:34
I got a friend of mine has a book coming out. And she sent me a text the other day about how she’s dealing with impostor syndrome. Like she’s at that place where the book is done, but it hasn’t come out yet. And so now she’s in the phase of the creative process where she’s like, everyone’s gonna hate it. Sure, I’m gonna have to go into hiding, which I also felt right before it came out. My book came out, and I just, you know, I was telling her that I think imposter syndrome is kind of bullshit. Like, you’re the expert on the books that you wrote. And I’m like, I can tell other people this so easily. But when it comes to me, I’m like, I’m 1,000%.

Traci Thomas 8:20
I still feel that way. People be like, Oh, well, you’re like the book expert. I’m like, the what I occasionally read and talking about. But I think it’s just hard to like, feel confident in a thing that you create for yourself. Like, it’s not like you have a business card that’s like, Tessa Miller writer, you know, or like, I don’t know if it’s like Tracy Thomas, book expert, expert. Right. Which I mean, I’ve definitely am not there’s just too many books in the world for anyone to be a book expert. I feel like it’s like impossible, but I totally feel the insecurity around the label thing. I just think it’s so interesting, because I just lie. You know, journalism and writing in my mind are the same. But journalist is my dream job. I want to be a hard hitting investigative I want to be Yeah, I wouldn’t be really exposing I went on the lam with my

Tessa Miller 9:17
Yeah, like exposing President. Yes. Oh, my gosh, yeah. That was that was my dream when I went to journalism school. And then you work in journalism for a while. And it’s just, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a it’s a great industry and a greatly terrible industry at the same time. And, you know, I got sick and I got really, really sick in 2015. And it’s just like, you have to grind in journalism. And the hours were so long and a lot of people just have the appetite for that, you know, like I worked in a newsroom with people who would just like Stay in the newsroom all night and keep a bottle of scotch in their desk drawer. I couldn’t, I just yeah, it was just it got to the point where I couldn’t, I couldn’t really manage it anymore physically. And also emotionally, it’s hard to, you know, because like, you’re just hearing about the worst stuff that’s ever happened to people every day. And especially when I worked at The Daily Beast for several years as an editor, we would have meetings several times a day. And a lot of the a lot of The Daily Beast strategy was to do like local crime stories and elevate them to a national level. And so it was just, you know, like, murderers and assaults. And yeah, I think some people are good at separating that kind of stuff. But I just like, don’t sleep at night. Yeah, a lot. And, you know, you have to call people for interviews and comments and stuff, sometimes when they’re having the worst moments of their lives. For me, it was like, give these people some space. But that’s not how it works. Like, you have to get the story. And so that was hard for me too. But some people are just made for her that kind of stuff. I like to be a little more removed from it.

Traci Thomas 11:17
Yeah, I think that I would like to be a journalist, but not all the things you’re saying. I’m like, I don’t want to do any of that.

Tessa Miller 11:23
I think if you could be like a freelance investigative journalist, that’s what I’d want. Yeah. Would be just kiss like, because you could do it at your own pace. Yeah. You wouldn’t have to go through the muck of the stories that you’re not working on. Right. And, you know, carry all that terrible stuff with you that you hear in the newsroom every day, all that stuff. And then you can just like, you know, where are your press fedora?

Traci Thomas 11:48
Yeah, exactly.

Tessa Miller 11:49
Bust into the White House.

Traci Thomas 11:51
And go meet Deep Throat in a parking lot. Like that’s what I’m trying to I’m trying to be like, Oh, honey, I have to go to get a drink. And then like, go into a garage and meet a stranger and find out and the President’s been taping.

Tessa Miller 12:04
With a long cigarette holder. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 12:06
And have gloves on. Yeah. Long gloves in LA, like wearing like a full winter look in LA. And like, it’s July man like I it’s, it’s more of just gets me in the mood? Don’t be suspicious. Yeah, this is a totally normal. Okay. I want to talk about your book. Obviously, I have so many questions for you. But the first one and the thing that stuck out to me, I think, from having so many conversations with so many authors from different, like marginalized groups or groups that are you know, I guess marginalized is the word though I despise it. I think the thing that people always say to me is like, I didn’t write this for that outside person, like black authors, or like I wrote this for black, black readers, or, you know, queer authors, I wrote this story that I wish that I had read or not, you know, whatever. But you specifically say in your book that you’re writing not only for chronically ill and disabled people, but also for those people who know them, or love them, or may come in contact with them. And I’m really curious about that decision, because, in my interviews, sort of a rare choice.

Tessa Miller 13:16
Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, I kind of had this dual vision when I was writing it. And the one side was definitely very specific to the chronically ill, and disabled community, for sure. And especially people who are newly diagnosed, and often people will email me and they’re just totally blindsided by, you know, having to suddenly navigate our healthcare system, then they don’t know how to, yeah, that’s a big, that’s a big one. They don’t know how to talk to romantic partners, or, you know, etc, etc. So I was just thinking of all these things that a newly diagnosed person would need. So that’s very insular, I guess, to the community itself. But also what people write to me about and this conversation that comes up a lot in my support groups and places like that is that people feel like they don’t have the language to say what they need to say to their loved ones. And so I was sort of envisioning this as like, something they could give to a family member or friend, or even a boss or something to help them kind of understand. And also to give them a little bit of like, a barrier in that conversation. You know, like, if they don’t, if they’re afraid to have that conversation with someone if they don’t know what to say. It’s like, you know, I can just hand you this, this book. So it was both it was for chronically ill people first, but also I knew that it needed to be something that a non chronically ill or non disabled person could also read. and come away with a better understanding of chronic illness and disability?

Traci Thomas 15:06
And how does that change how you write? Like, are you constantly writing and thinking about both kinds of audiences? Because I know like, one of my biggest complaints is when I think an author of color or black author has written for the white gaze, and it’s like, then we went down and we had grits. grits are, you know, and it’s like, they’re, like, explain it, or like, then I have put on my do rag to make sure that my braids are, you know, like, whatever it is. And I’m like, not my braids, but like that kind of like explanation and like, awareness of the other. And then also, in your case, you’re writing for two audiences who have you know, and obviously, not all chronic illness or disability is the same. And all of that goes to me without saying, but I should say it just in case for other people, but how are you sort of navigating telling your story, which is very specific to you, slash, telling the story of the greater community to the community slash telling the story of chronic illness to people who maybe are not aware or thinking about it?

Tessa Miller 16:11
Yeah, it was, it was a challenge.

Traci Thomas 16:15
It was hard for me to even ask the question.

Tessa Miller 16:17
No, I often felt like I was writing. Definitely two books in one, but also sometimes three or four books. One. So thank God for my editor, Barbara Jones, shout out to Barbara Jones at Macmillan. She really helped me with like, how do we put all these together? Because when I first started writing, I was like, we’ll just do part one. Here’s all the memoir. And then part two, interesting all the reporting. Or I also thought like, maybe I’ll do a chapter of memoir, and then a chapter of reporting. And then and I didn’t feel good either. So it was that was a probably the biggest challenge of the organization of everything. But when I was actually writing the book, I was thinking less about the comfort of a non disabled reader, and more about honestly and correctly, representing my community. And so that I think, has come up a lot in past interviews that I’ve done, where people are, like, you write really graphically about your body. Some of the details are gruesome was a word that someone used in one of my interviews. And I think it’s because I wanted to write honestly, about what my body does. And I have an inflammatory bowel disease, like it’s not super sexy, I can’t write about it. And I can make it sound cool and chic, or whatever. But I wanted to be really honest about what my body does. And a lot of that is gross and like, bodies do strange and scary and disgusting things. And I think my background in science journalism, like I wanted to make sure I was accurate with the descriptions of what chronically ill bodies can do. But I think that for and a lot of the stuff in the book, like it’s very common topics of conversation within the community, or within support groups like that, that isn’t shocking at all, to people that I talked to who also have similar illnesses and stuff. But I think to a non disabled reader, a lot of what they’ve read in the past maybe about disability is sanitized, I guess, and full of euphemisms for their comfort, their centering a non disabled non chronically ill reader. And that was something I was very adamant about in the editing process was like, I don’t want to I don’t want to make this like, I don’t want to use euphemisms, I don’t want to use substitute words for bodily functions. And I don’t, you know, I don’t want to skip over the actual details of what this disease does to a body. And thankfully, my my editors were on board with that. But I think that that’s a common fight for people who write about disability is like, you know, oh, how are people going to react to this, like, you know, when readers do have an ick factor, and I was thinking of that, too, but again, at the at, when I was making all these decisions about the language in the book, it just, it wasn’t to center, someone who might get a little bit grossed out. I would hope that the reader could overcome that impulse to stick with the writing.

Traci Thomas 19:53
So interesting, because I just can’t, I just don’t understand how you could write A book about inflammatory bowel disease without, without talking about,

Tessa Miller 20:06
Yeah.

Traci Thomas 20:07
Poop and blood and like guts, like, I don’t know. I’m like literally thinking about your book, like, what would she have said, like, I went to the restroom and it was gross. Like I don’t like and that’s still like not very-

Tessa Miller 20:25
Yeah, so I had read one. Well, I had read some books, before I wrote this book about inflammatory bowel disease. Most of them were written by nurses or nutritionists. And they were very much about like, this is what you should eat now, and that kind of thing. There wasn’t a lot of, you know, like description of what actually happens to your body when you have IBD. But I did read one other book, it was written by a man with Crohn’s disease, he was a food critic. And the it’s a memoir about basically how he can’t eat anymore. And he’s a food critic, and he had to be on like a all liquid diet for a year for to rest his digestive system. And there were parts of that book that I really, really liked. But it still just glossed over all of the details of what the illness actually did. You would you had mentioned abdominal pain I see.

Traci Thomas 21:33
But he wouldn’t talk about like, what actually was going on, it was more just

Tessa Miller 21:37
No poop, no blood, like nothing, nothing. And I just felt like, I feel like that’s such a disservice. Because if somebody with bowel disease is reading these books, and they’re having all of these very scary things happen to their body. And then they read these books, where that’s all just glossed over, they probably think they have like, the worst case of this that’s ever existed.

Traci Thomas 22:05
Like, Yes, I have the abdominal pain, but I also have a lot of other things happening.

Tessa Miller 22:10
Exactly. And I just had so wished that someone had actually described that to me, when I especially when I was first diagnosed. I mean, once I joined support groups and talk to other chronically ill people and people with my same illness, I started to realize like, oh, we all you know, we have different presentations, but a lot of overlaps of symptoms and that kind of thing. And that’s when I started to feel less afraid. Because when you’re reading something that says, I have this illness, but then I’m not going to tell you any details about what this illness does to my body. You’re kind of left like, Okay, I have no idea then like, why? Where do I fit in, in this, like range of symptoms that can happen. And that was a big focus and picking the right language to describe stuff. Like, I use butthole. Which the New York Times mentioned, and it’s probably the proudest moment of my life.

Traci Thomas 23:18
That’s probably the first time that’s been in the New York Times Book Review section.

Tessa Miller 23:21
I think that it is, I’m gonna put that on my tombstone.

Traci Thomas 23:28
Tessa Miller lived a life. Butthole

Tessa Miller 23:31
Yeah, lived, it had died, and she lives, butthole. But there’s a lot of choice that goes into that, finally, and it’s like, you know, you can choose the very clinical language, right? Or you can choose the way that we actually talk about our bodies and Right, right, right. You know, it just I tried to write this book in a way that really anyone could read it. I tried to keep it very not clinical, when I was describing, you know, the stuff that the disease does, and body parts and that kind of thing. I tried to keep it more. Like if you were just talking between friends, you would call it your butthole. Like, that’s just yeah, that’s just that’s how it would go word that we all use. Yeah, you know, so, yeah, there were a lot of interesting decisions that I had to make when writing those sections.

Traci Thomas 24:25
I’m glad you went with butthole. I think it made the book for me. I liked it. I love about Oh, my God. I mean, I’m here. I’m here for it. I can’t believe that people. Well, I mean, I can’t I know people get on me constantly for book recommendations of like, oh, it’s triggering. I’m like, okay, but you picked up a book about a murder like what did you think was gonna happen? Yeah, we have a book about chronic bowel disease. We’re going to talk about poopoo sorry.

Tessa Miller 24:52
Yeah, people don’t get so worked up about blood, especially when it’s done. You know, like a true crime book or whatever the bloody are, the better. We’re getting murder. Yeah. If you’re talking about blood in your body. Yeah, people get a little offended by that.

Traci Thomas 25:16
Yeah. Okay, I want to know a little bit about your body, which this makes you actually makes me slightly uncomfortable to ask because I feel like it’s inappropriate. And like, invasive. However, I know that you’ve written this book for a lot of these reasons. So I want to know, how do you navigate not only I know that, for a lot of people who write a memoir, you have to get like really honest about your family and your life and your and your feelings and all experiences. But in your case, you’re also having to bring a level of vulnerability to your actual physical body and sharing these things about what your body does, and sort of the betrayal that you felt from your body and talking about the treatments that you have. And like a lot of things about not just your personal, emotional state, but your physical body and how how did you navigate that like being open to people even asking you about your body and talking to you about your body? As a person who is chronically ill? Like, how does that go?

Tessa Miller 26:16
Yeah, I think that time was on my side with this because I had been ill for on the cusp of 10 years when I started writing the book. And I had written publicly before, not in as much depth obviously, as I talk about it in in the book, but I had written before about, like, my field, my first fecal transplant, which if you haven’t read the book, I’ve had three fecal transplants for a bacterial infection called C diff. So I had kind of like, dunked my toe in the water of publicly writing gross things about my body. And the first time that I did that, which I think was in 2013, several months after my first transplant. That was really scary. Because it was the first time I had done it. And I think I wrote about this in the book just about how I was so terrified that like, everyone would just think I was disgusting. And if you Googled me, they would be like, Oh, the girl who like got the poop transplant, like I was just like this, you know, I was also 10 years younger than so I was much more insecure, just about every and more easily embarrassed, which I don’t have that as much anymore. But the response to that piece about the fecal transplant was just so opposite of what I thought it was gonna be. Like, I had a bunch of people writing to me and being like, you know, I also have bowel issues. Or I also have had C Diff in the past and or I have C Diff currently, and like, I’m on my seventh round of antibiotics, and no one has even mentioned, a fecal transplant as treatment to me and that kind of stuff. And I even had people that I worked with at the time, I was working at Gawker, rip to the old Gawker, but I was working at Gawker, and even people that I worked with in that office, like, wrote me secret emails to be like, no one else at work knows that I am living with this, you know, illness, whatever. And so that I think I just got so lucky with the response to that, that it made me much braver to write about that kind of stuff. Moving forward. Interesting. had people been like, oh, yeah, this is sick. And why would you write about this, and this is so disgusting. I maybe would have just shut down and never written the book, you know. So I’m really thankful that the response was so surprising to me at the time, and gave me this opening that I actually could write about this kind of stuff. And that people would actually respond to it in a way where they were either like, this really resonates with me personally. Or there were all the like, science nerds, microbiota nerds who wrote to me like, yeah, vehicle transplants are going mainstream. shockingly large community of fecal transplant supporters out there. But yeah, it was just it was such a kind response to something that I was so scared then to write. And because the opposite happened, it was like, less scary to talk about it in the book, but also, it was eight years later when I was writing the book. And I was, I just had spoken about my body and And what my body does and what chronically ill bodies do and disabled bodies do for so many years at that point, that it was, it was much less scary. But I still was terrified when the book came out. And I spent several weeks before the book came out, considering if I should just try to pay back my advance and cancel my book contract.

Traci Thomas 30:26
I’m so glad you didn’t.

Tessa Miller 30:28
Hide the manuscript forever. My poor, my older sister, I had so many calls with her where I was like, Okay, what if I just go into hiding? What if I change the name on the book to a pseudo name? So no one knows it’s me.

Traci Thomas 30:48
Is that just because you were nervous that people would think you were gross? Like, what was it that was making you so stressed out about having your name on your story?

Tessa Miller 30:59
Yeah, it was less the personal physical details and more the family stuff, I think. And that was more because I was just scared of hurting anyone who’s in the book, especially in my mom, because she just is still alive. But my dad is dead. I can’t hurt his feelings anymore. Right, right. But my mom is very much living. And I was worried about her and how she would react to people around her reading the book. And I allowed her to be pretty involved in the process. I let her read sections as I was writing them. And I also let her read the full manuscript when it was turned into the publisher, and all that kind of thing. And she had okayed everything, but I was still just, you know, there’s a lot of unknowns, I didn’t know if like someone close to her would read it, and then come and ask her why she act in certain ways in certain situations, and that kind of thing. And I just, I feel protective of my mom. So that was, that was the biggest stress leading up to the book, the the physical stuff was much less stressful to me, surprisingly, than the emotional family, you know, kind of mock that, you know, I had to decide how much I was going to put in and which stories were mine to tell and all that kind of complicated stuff that I’m sure everyone who writes right.

Traci Thomas 32:33
So memoir, like typical memoir, drama, family, people in your life, all of that, I we’re going to transition a little bit away from your book into your reading habits. And I just want folks to know, I’m sure you’re sitting there going, I have a lot of other questions for Tessa, about chronic illness, blah, blah, blah, I have those questions. And we are going to get into that in part two. When we talk about young Gruz book, I live a life like yours because I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that book, and especially in relationship to what you wrote. And so I have a bunch of other questions that we will get to. So if you’re sitting there being like, you didn’t ask about this. You didn’t ask about that. There. It’s coming. Let’s come. I promise you. I think it’s February 23. The last Wednesday of the month we’re going to discuss that for the book club. We always do this I didn’t prep you for this but and I think sometimes people think that I do these ask the sacks questions am I like write that myself. And I kid you not Tessa, the day after week booked and confirm the time and I sent you like all the details or whatever. That week. I got this email and it is truly the perfect book request moment for you. And I did not plan this. And it just came in and I was like, Great done.

Tessa Miller 33:57
I’m so excited but also nervous.

Traci Thomas 33:59
No, it’s great. I think you’ll do great. I have a lot so it’s fine if you don’t have any but this comes from Grace and grace as as a person with multiple chronic illnesses who identifies as disabled, I pride myself on giving amazing recommendations for books with disability representation. However, I keep getting asked for books that I’d recommend to people who have recently been diagnosed with cancer, or someone who has a close friend or relative who has been recently diagnosed. I always recommend Tessa Miller’s What doesn’t kill you. But beyond that, I’m stumped. Any suggestions? Crazy right that that just came in? I was like, oh my god, are you in my brain?

Tessa Miller 34:37
You’re like, I’m going to put that on the air immediately.

Traci Thomas 34:40
Yeah usually like sometimes it takes like months before I can get to some of them. But this one came in and I was like, this is weirdly so thank you guys. I’ll go first and give a few and then unless you have some you look like you have some You go first.

Tessa Miller 34:53
Well, I have two that are top of mind but I think that the first question that you would have to Ask when you’re choosing a book for someone who’s newly diagnosed with cancer is are they more of a realist? Like do they want like, you know, something that’s like, kind of hard sciency nonfiction about how cancer works, for example? Or are they someone who needs a lot of hope and optimism, and something that is maybe less about the ins and outs of how cancer works and more like a memoir of someone who survived cancer or something like that. When I think about illness, I’m more on the side of like, I want to know everything about a disease works. I want the science so Emperor of All Maladies as well

Traci Thomas 35:48
That was the first on my list.

Tessa Miller 35:52
And the second book, which is a book that I really love is When Breath Becomes Air. But the author of that book, obviously, is no longer with us. And I think sometimes a lingering facts like that can maybe be more hurtful to someone who’s newly diagnosed than helpful. So a memoir about cancer of someone who has survived cancer would maybe be like between two kingdoms, which I have yet to read, but a loss on my little have recommended to me Yeah, so those are the three that just came to me and now want to hear yours.

Traci Thomas 36:31
Okay, so I had the exact same thought process of Well, I don’t know what kind of person this is, is the family member going to be spooked if you give them you know, When Breath Becomes Air, so that was on my list, also just a small Stax plug. We did an episode on the Undying, the unwinding of the miracle by Julie Yip Williams, who also did die from her cancer. But I found the episode to be super interesting in the book to be super interesting. But again, that has a ending that the cancer you know, was what killed this person. Now, we also did an episode on a book called the undying by Anne Boyer that also won the Pulitzer Prize like The Emperor of All Maladies, and it’s her memoir about her experience with breast cancer, she does not die, but she goes through, she has like a stage three or four breast cancer. So she goes through the full gamut of, you know, treatments. And she’s talking about not only her experience as like a memoir, but also doing a whole like sciency thing and talking about the cultural relevance of cancer and all of these things. So that one’s really good. The cancer journals by Audrey Lorde is us sort of a more a little bit of a throwback texts that you could latch

Tessa Miller 37:42
on my stacks questionnaire trace. Oh, amazing, that I always love to recommend that one to anyone who’s interested in chronic illness or even terminal illness. That’s just a beautiful book.

Traci Thomas 37:57
Yeah. Well, no, I don’t have to ask you that.

Tessa Miller 38:01
Look that I love to recommend to people.

Traci Thomas 38:03
Yeah that’s, I mean, I think that that’s a really good choice. And then the last one is not specifically a cancer related book. However, I have recommended this to people at all different stages of their lives for all different reasons and have yet to have anyone say anything bad about it. And this is definitely on the more like, hopefully side would be tiny, beautiful things by Cheryl straight.

Tessa Miller 38:24
I just gave me that when I got sick. That’s a perfect choice.

Traci Thomas 38:27
Did it? Did it help when you were sick? I’ve never recommended it to someone who was sick. But I thought it seems like I’d like.

Tessa Miller 38:33
It did I was actually I was hospitalized at the time. It was my long hospitalization in 2015. And my friend brandies draws me who’s a amazing reporter at NBC News Now, he reports on Q anon and all of all of the tentacles that come out of internet disinfo campaigns that she gave me, she gave me tiny, beautiful things. And it was immensely comforting to me at that time. So that’s an excellent choice.

Traci Thomas 39:06
Yeah. And again, we have an episode on that book too. We have an episode on all my favorite books. I feel like at this point, so those would be my recommendations along with what Tessa said we had all overlap on those as well and grace. Hopefully this helps you to you know, recommend to the people in your life. And other people. If you’re looking for book recommendations, email, ask the stacks at the stacks. podcast.com. Okay, now we’re gonna get into the reading question. I’m so excited. I don’t have to ask you about book you recommend? Because I know No, but we always start here two books you love one book you hate.

Tessa Miller 39:39
Okay two books I love. I chose section for both of my choices, because I thought that would be unexpected, because I read 90% nonfiction so I tried to go in the opposite direction here. And when I was choosing these, it was difficult because there are so many books that I love, but I thought about books that I I recommend to people all the time, I thought about books that I have read more than once, and books that I just think about often. And so my two choices are Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Oh, and a book that I hate. I don’t know if this is gonna be controversial or not, I kind of have two choices. I love it is, well, this might not actually be controversial, but I know some people say it’s like one of the greatest books ever written whatever. Catcher in the Rye

Traci Thomas 40:38
Despise. Despise that book people have put it in the love and the hate it is a book I hate.

Tessa Miller 40:46
I read that book in high school and hated it then and then I read it again in adulthood because I thought I needed to give it another shot. You know, because like, all these critics at the New Yorker will choose it as like one of the three best books ever written and whatever, I hated it more as an adult, hate, hate hate. And the other this is more of a collection of books. Okay, and I, I think that this writer is a very nice man and I used to run into him sometimes when I worked at Conde Nast.

Traci Thomas 41:25
Oh, I want to guess it’s the Malcolm Gladwell books. Oh my god. Yes. I’m so excited. Oh, my God, uh, his most recent book, talking to strangers.

Tessa Miller 41:36
I didn’t even read it. Twice. I’ve read all the other ones I couldn’t.

Traci Thomas 41:41
I couldn’t even do an episode on talking to strangers. I hate that book so much. I actually was a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I really liked Malcolm Gladwell when he was like super trendy, I was super into him. He used to be on like the ringer podcast, like you’d go talk to Bill Simmons or whatever. So I would like listen. And then he started his own podcast, and I liked the first season. But towards the end of the first season, he had a few episodes where I was like, That logic is not that I don’t, I don’t feel like something doesn’t feel great about this, right. And then in the second season, there was like more episodes like that. And then I went back and I read the tipping point, which I thought I had read, but I guess I never had and I was like, there’s a lot of things that are not going right here. And then I fucking read, talking to strangers.

Tessa Miller 42:30
I need I need your summary on this because I can’t do it. I haven’t read it.

Traci Thomas 42:36
Basically. It’s about like, how we interact with strangers or whatever. And he doesn’t define what a stranger is. So like, in some cases, a stranger is like, yeah, it’s very Malcolm Gladwell. Sometimes a stranger is someone that you’ve worked with for 10 years. And sometimes a stranger is a is Brock Turner, who sexually assaulted Emily Doe, aka Chanel, Miller, Chanel, Miller, say Tessa Miller, Miller, sorry. But like so. So those are all strangers, first of all, but also he tries to, like justify these interactions between strangers. And it’s all framed around the Sandra Bland killing or death and not traffic stop interaction. But he removes it removes race from it, because it’s not about race. It’s about strangers. And I’m like, out of your No, it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with policing practice. It’s like, it’s just so it’s all the talking points for liberal people who are using air quotes on liberal liberal people who don’t want to talk about race who don’t see color, don’t want to talk about race. Yeah, it’s it’s that whole, like, there’s two sides to every story. Brock Turner didn’t rape her. He was drunk. And when we’re really drunk, and we’re young, and our brains aren’t formed, blah, blah. It’s like, I cannot have a fucking race, murder, rape apologist situation. And it’s just like, that’s the whole, like,

Tessa Miller 44:06
the dangerous part of that, too, is that people will read that book for like a confirmation bias for the like, kind of thing that they’re already thinking. And because Gladwell has been branded as like, intellectual and like, I just, that’s the thing, when and the issue that I’ve had with his other books, which it sounds like, is a is just magnified, and his last one is the like, there’s just no nuance in the discussions that he has. There’s a lot of like, just painting everything with a broad brush and then to remove the issues that are inconvenient to your argument. Like yeah, like I haven’t read the book, but when you’re talking about how he framed the Sandra Bland murder, and to take race out of that and to make it an issue of strangers it sounds like you’re really trying to just manipulate your reader into buying your argument. And that is what troubles me. So glad we can talk about this. I feel like yeah, I feel so real.

Traci Thomas 45:19
I know. And he and the thing that drives me crazy is he has so much street cred from like, Oprah and all these places. And like he is like, so what he says is like, oh, I’ll just read it, and I’ll be smarter. And you don’t have to critically think about it, because there’s no reason to question him because he’s Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah, but no question.

Tessa Miller 45:38
That is just-

Traci Thomas 45:39
He’s tripping, Yeah. And like, I feel like, as people get older, they get more entrenched, you know, in their values and their thinking and all of that. And he has gone off a deep end, that is a place that I am not super a fan of personally, like he’s just gotten like, weirdly conservative in a way that I just really wish was always I think in him, but you know, it’s just like, I hate it. Okay. Okay. We’ll talk more about your reading because we’re like running out of time. And I could talk about- I gotta do an episode on the book.

Tessa Miller 46:08
I was just thinking that, like, you know, who probably reads Malcolm Gladwell books and really likes them. Green Bay quarterback, Aaron Rodgers.

Traci Thomas 46:19
Oh my gosh, so we’re recording this the day after the Packers lost the 40 Niners my team of choice. And I have to tell you that I just spent all night wanting people to tweet Aaron Rodgers jokes and I just kept tweeting more jokes, more jokes. Like my dream. I despise Aaron Rodgers.

Tessa Miller 46:38
Yeah, I am a basketball girl through and through. I do not really watch football and I think the NFL is just obviously trash. horrid trash. But I was celebrating with everybody.

Traci Thomas 46:54
I was we weren’t, we went on. I went on a date night with my husband for the first time since this year, I think even earlier than that. And we had to have the our phone on the table and this other. At the end of the game. We were like screaming and these guys were like, Yeah, they were like, are you guys watching sports? We were like we are watching more or watching. Growth. Yeah. Anyways, yeah. Aaron Rodgers by Good luck in the offseason doing your own research. Okay. What are some books that you’re looking forward to reading?

Tessa Miller 47:29
Hm, So I chose three author memoirs by disabled or chronically ill, writers to kind of tie in with our discussion today and the discussion of I live a life like yours. And I think that these were because when you and I were discussing, like, what should we what should we choose to read? And I think these might have been in the list that I sent because I sent a few disability memoirs. So one is a face for Picasso by Ariel Henley, which is one that we both really wanted to read. And I still need to read that one. Another one is called Gollum Girl by Riva Lehrer. And that I think, one there’s this prize called, like the bar Bellion prize. I hope I’m saying that right, which is, I think one of the only literary prizes for disabled writers. And I think she won that either last year or the year before. So that has been lingering on my list for a while and I need to read that. And the last one is the cowered by Jared McGinnis, which hadn’t heard of until recently, but really kind of piqued my interest.

Traci Thomas 48:47
How much of an effort do you make to prioritize books by disabled and chronically ill writers? How much is that a part of your reading practice?

Tessa Miller 48:55
It’s a pretty big part of it for sure. And has become more part of my practice, especially since I wrote my book, and learned how challenging it is to be a disabled writer in sort of mainstream publishing, because publishers still think that books about chronic illness and disability are niche, and they don’t really treat them as mainstream potential best sellers. They think that they’re just that only chronically ill and disabled people are going to read them and that these issues don’t apply to everyone which is especially laughable during the pandemic. And also just because like 99% of the people who work in publishing are non disabled, at least in my experience, and so there’s just a lot of very steep uphill battles that disabled and chronically ill writers have to have to go through when they’re getting their books published. And so I do make an effort now I use, it used to be less before I wrote my book, and then I realized how just challenging it is. So that’s been a big focus of my reading the past two or three years, I would say,

Traci Thomas 50:18
Do you set other reading goals?

Tessa Miller 50:20
I don’t really set goals, but I do set deadlines for myself. I operate very well on a deadline. Whenever people asked me like, you know what my process was for writing my book, it was just, I knew I had a deadline, and then I just blacked out for a year and woke up at some point with hopefully some words that I can turn in. But I think that’s why I do so well in like, academic settings, too, is because everything’s on a deadline. And if I don’t have a deadline for myself, I just like never finished stuff. I if I was just writing this book for myself, I never would have finished it. It was like the contractual pressure of, you know, being beholden to a publisher. And knowing that this was the day I had to have it. And that really pushed me to finish it. And it’s the same thing for when I read books. So I tried to like set a deadline for myself, like, I want to finish this book by next Saturday, or whatever, depending on the length of the book. And I have to do that all the time in grad school too. Because, you know, keeping up with the reading is like the biggest grad school is basically just like a book club. I really like go read this book, and then we’ll meet back here in a week. And we’ll all talk about it. Like that’s really what grad school has been for me so far. So that kind of setting deadlines for myself practice has been useful. But I do wish that I could be more goal oriented about my reading practices, and also that I would be better about, like keeping track of what I read, which is also timely, because I know you just released the stacks tracker, which looks like that spreadsheet situation is so soothing to my brain Skald. Yeah, because sometimes I will feel like I haven’t. I’ll be like, I haven’t read anything lately. But then I’ll realize that I actually just finished like three or four books, and I have not kept track of those. And so especially like at the end of the year, when I’m thinking back about like, what did I read this year? I can’t think of anything you need to do the tracker.

Traci Thomas 52:36
I know, I really do. Okay, how about you said what book you love to recommend to people. But what’s like the last really good book someone recommended to you?

Tessa Miller 52:44
Oh, this is actually also the last book that I bought, which I have just started reading and so I can’t give a full opinion on it. But I already know that it’s going to be great. And I love it and, and I will love it. And that is becoming abolitionists by Derrick, for now. So and I also love that was one of my favorite book covers two from the last year.

Traci Thomas 53:12
Because in yours were two of my faves. I think the flowers growing out of things

Tessa Miller 53:15
The flowers growing out of something grotesque, like the I love, I love her book cover, especially because it reminds me of like, in sci fi when nature starts to take things back for itself. And I just read like she has the cop car with the flowers and vines and stuff growing out. And it just makes me think of like, oh, the land is like reclaiming this thing that we don’t need anymore. And so I love that I’m only maybe a quarter of the way through but I love her I gotta get solved. Yeah, her writing style is is. I love people who make difficult topics. very readable, and that they’re thinking about a wide readership. And she Yeah, she’s just she’s great.

Traci Thomas 54:05
Okay, what are your reading snacks? You sort of set us up earlier.

Tessa Miller 54:10
So I’m a big, big snacker because of my illness. It is hard for me to keep weight on. So I am constantly snacking. And like I said earlier, there are so many good gluten free snacks now. Even 10 years ago, like gluten free was just not a thing that you would see in the grocery store. So now there’s all kinds of things. One of my absolute favorite snacks right now. Is gluten free double stuff Oreos. Oh, gluten free Oreos, I think just came out with them. Last year I had not had an Oreo since I got diagnosed with celiac, which was 2013 I want to say it’s one of the best moments of my life cracking those Oreos open. Now they want some times I’ll just eat like a whole sleeve of them for dinner. With milk I drink cow’s milk. I know that that’s also a very high drink cow’s milk. Very controversial, but I like to not fuck with like nut milks and stuff. I just I want. I don’t know, I guess it’s because I was raised in the Got Milk era when everyone was just like, funneling cow’s milk into my mouth.

Traci Thomas 55:19
I’m team real cow’s milk. People always are like, do you work for the milk lobby? I’m like, You know what I fucking do. Okay, Someone’s probably. I’m allergic to nuts. So I can’t have oat milk is gross. To me. Rice Milk is gross. Milk is disgusting. It’s all gross. Give me a cow’s udder. I’m here.

Tessa Miller 55:38
I’m sure somebody’s probably going to email you and be like, You should tell Tessa that cow’s milk gave her Crohn’s disease because I’ve gotten that before too, that, like, that’s probably what gave me Crohn’s. But I’m telling you.

Traci Thomas 55:49
If it did, you’re here now. At this point, you can’t fix it your milk. Oh, also, if you email me that I’m literally going to destroy I’m gonna send you a nasty email back.

Tessa Miller 56:03
That is one of my favorites. I went through like, various snacking phases during the pandemic, especially when we were in full on lockdown pre vaccine. And one of those phases was that I had to have a bowl of cereal every night. But I called it my night soup. I’d be like, hungry my night soup. And now my husband has a bowl of cereal every night and calls it his night soup. It’s like a whole ridiculous thing.

Traci Thomas 56:35
What’s the cereal? What’s the cereal?

Tessa Miller 56:37
So I have to have gluten free cereal.

Traci Thomas 56:42
There’s lots of there’s lots those rice chex, corn chex.

Tessa Miller 56:45
I recently found out when I was going through my night soup phase that Honey Nut Cheerios are gluten free. Which I did not know but those those were good my husband’s go to is Cinnamon Toast Crunch which he calls CTC.

Traci Thomas 57:02
Ok, that’s not gluten free.

Tessa Miller 57:04
That’s not gluten free. I cannot have that one. I wish that I could though because I’m a big fan of like the cinnamon stuff.

Traci Thomas 57:13
Do you have the cinnamon chex? They’re rice So good.

Tessa Miller 57:17
So very similar.

Traci Thomas 57:19
I love those sometimes more than a Cinnamon Toast Crunch because sometimes Cinnamon Toast Crunch is just it’s too much. Yeah, I like the rice check because it’s a little lighter. The milk really gets. It’s all about the milk. It’s a vehicle for the

Tessa Miller 57:31
Yeah, so Chex. The whole line of Chex is good. So I was like I tried the vanilla checks and the chocolate and the cinnamon and the peanut butter. Peanut butter has also been.

Traci Thomas 57:43
Have you ever done magic spoon? They sponsor this show.

Tessa Miller 57:46
But I heard their ad on your show. And I’ve also seen it. I get ads for them on Instagram all the time. And I’m like about to pull the trigger on magic spoon. I have to try them.

Traci Thomas 57:56
Yeah, I like them. Because I don’t I mean, it’s not it’s not a full sugar, cereal malt, right. But I like that there’s protein in it because I never get enough protein. And so for me, it’s like after I do a little like yoga and I also see like a broad chicken breast or whatever, I’m just gonna have cereal.

Tessa Miller 58:15
Yeah. And then my lat like the snack that I’ve been eating my entire life since childhood is a snack plate, which I grew up in learns that that was just like a charcuterie board. But we grew up poor so no one in my house was calling it a short story board. We were like, oh want a snack plate. Which the basis of is always like cheese and crackers. And then you can add whatever you want. So olives, pickles, any kind of salami whatever, you might throw some grapes on there anything and that’s like still my only we need that for dinner sometimes are all like make a big make a big one for me and my husband to share it just like I don’t know it comforts me reminds her childhood, my mom, I used to ask my mom to make me a snack plate and then it would be like a surprise of what was going to be on it. And so that was always like exciting for me as a kid. It was like a treat. And sometimes I’ll have a snack late every day. I just all you want every single day.

Traci Thomas 59:22
Okay, we’re running out of time. So I’m gonna ask you a few more. Okay, I’ll go back to sort of rapid fire rapid fire. Okay, last book to make you laugh.

Tessa Miller 59:30
Oh, there was a couple lines in I live a life like yours that made me it’s not a it’s not a necessarily funny book. But there were two lines in there that made me laugh out loud and all. I’ll tell you what those are when we talk about it for book club.

Traci Thomas 59:46
I can’t wait. Last book that made you cry. Seek you. So good. Last book that made you angry?

Tessa Miller 59:55
Pedagogy of the oppressed.

Traci Thomas 59:58
last book that made you feel like you You learned a lot.

Tessa Miller 1:00:01
I read this book called Other people’s words: the cycle of low literacy for graduate school, which is about Appalachia and the chronic cycles of non literacy in generations of Appalachian families. I learned a lot in that book.

Traci Thomas 1:00:21
Any books that you feel proud about having read?

Tessa Miller 1:00:26
Oh, you know what? I was a Russian lit minor in college, and I had to read all of the the meaty Russian books, and I’m proud to have read those. I don’t think I want to do it again. But I’m proud that I did it.

Traci Thomas 1:00:43
Good for you. I did Anna Karenina once, and I’m never going back. baby. Any book that you feel embarrassed about not having read?

Tessa Miller 1:00:56
I haven’t read like a lot of the Sci Fi classics, like you do. And Electric Sheep and all these books that I feel like people talk about a lot, especially in like, Twitter discourse. But how how embarrassing not having read those or if I feel like I should I have complex feelings. You’re fine. I sell them movies. Other movies instead?

Traci Thomas 1:01:23
I’m not I’d say no. All of it is a no for me. Okay, if you were a teacher, which one day you will be soon, I guess what’s a book you would assign to high school students?

Tessa Miller 1:01:35
This was a hard choice, but I went with the new Jim Crow.

Traci Thomas 1:01:39
Hmm, you might see you’re not ready to be a professor yet. You missed the opportunity to sign your book. Tessa, we got to get you to sign your book.

Tessa Miller 1:01:51
I gotta call myself a writer first.

Traci Thomas 1:01:53
Yeah, we’re getting there. You call me I’m gonna coach you up. I’m gonna get you real good. Okay, last one. If you could require the current president of the United States to read one book, what would it be?

Tessa Miller 1:02:05
I would make Biden read health justice now by Timothy Fosse, which is a case for universal health care.

Traci Thomas 1:02:14
That’s a fantastic choice. Also, your book your book fits in to Joe read two books, Joe. All right, everybody. Tessa’s book, what doesn’t kill you is now out in paperback as of today. Please go get it if you haven’t read it yet. I also want to plug the audiobook. It’s fantastic. I listened and I really really loved it. I felt like I got to know you. It was just very, it was a great experience.

Tessa Miller 1:02:36
Thank you for listening to my voice for 10 hours. It was great.

Traci Thomas 1:02:41
I mean, I listened on 1.5 I’m gonna be honest, it wasn’t quite time to do it. Yeah, gotta go fast. Six and a half hours. Yeah, a little shorter. And we will be back February 23 to discuss Yan Gruz book. I live a life like yours for the Stax book club. So please get your copy and come back and read with us. Tessa, thank you for being here.

Tessa Miller 1:03:01
Thanks, Traci. This was such a thrill.

Traci Thomas 1:03:05
Yay. And everyone else we will see you in the stacks. All right, that does it for us today. Thank you all so much for listening and thank you to Tessa for being my guest. Remember the stacks book club pick for February is I live a life like yours by Jan Grue. We will be discussing the book on the podcast on Wednesday, February 23 With Tessa Miller. 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.

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