Trauma & Dissociation discussion

Please nominate books for July book of the month. Must have at least 500 ratings and be remotely related to trauma and/or dissociation. Can be scholarly, shoot from the hip opinion, non-fiction, fiction (I don’t think we’ve ever done this), memoir, etc.

Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship by Laurence Heller

Educated by Tara Westover (2018)

This won Goodreads Best Memoir in 2018, and related her life growing up with anti-government, overly religious parents in relative isolation. It is #21 on my personal best books of all time. Life is pretty damn tough when your parents indoctrinate you with their agenda and it isn't grounded in the reality of the world, and there is little/no support from functional adults to be had. It is quite the saga to climb out of some ideological hole like that on your own, as a child, going against the flow of everything and everyone you've ever known. Fighting for your sanity seems an entirely worthy fight.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Memoir that deals with alcoholism, a dysfunctional family, and perhaps poverty.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

This memoir deals with racism, rape, trauma.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This would be different. A fiction. It is allegedly about the authors PTSD from war. CPTSD more likely. He was a POW in WW II. I have read something of his in the past. He is a very unique author, with a unique sense of humor.

Trying to span more broadly the various sources of trauma, true experience of it in memoirs, as well as “how to recover” texts. The fiction option in this list is … experimental.

I’m open to other suggestions. This is supposed to be a group, not just my personal reading. Please feel free to suggest books, with 1000+ ratings, and we’ll vote to see what the group book of the month will be.