BLOODLINES

A woman tries to keep her daughter healthy in the shadow of her troubled history with her own mother in Yokas’s debut memoir.

The author had a complicated relationship with her mother, Lauraine, who, Yokas writes, could be judgmental and severe, especially when it came to her daughter. This tension was partially responsible for Yokas’ relocation from New Jersey all the way to California after finishing college. When Lauraine died at the age of 67 as the result of a stroke, the author felt as though she’d finally moved beyond her mother’s exacting gaze, even if she’d never gotten the closure she was looking for. Examining a photo of Lauraine, Yokas reflects, “I detected our history, a legacy that had impacted her, our tiny family, and me those many years ago.…For decades, I’d been holding onto questions I’d meant to ask, but now there would be no answers.” Shortly thereafter, Yokas’ 13-year-old daughter, Faith, started exhibiting eating habits that the author found disconcerting; she was reminded of Lauraine’s insistence that the author, who’d always struggled with her weight, practice greater discipline. As Faith’s issues became increasingly concerning, spiraling into disordered eating, depression, and self-harm, Yokas was forced to look back at her own—and Lauraine’s—mental health histories. All those questions that Yokas had never asked Lauraine would need to be answered if she wanted to save her daughter from repeating the same mistakes. The author’s descriptive prose captures her emotional journey, as here, where she recalls attempting to keep an eye on Faith’s behavior: “Sometimes I tried to be invisible. Other times I tried to be obvious. I stood vigil outside the bathroom door, willing her to make healthier choices. Or I banged on the door and pleaded for her to let me in. I stomped like a mad bull, prowled like a feral cat.” Yokas connects the dots between various points of generational trauma to examine the ways in which we get caught up in narratives that began before we were born—and the ways in which such narratives can be rewritten.

A relatable family story of mental illness and maternal love.