“This is a time of sudden catastrophic events,” began Juliane Corn Lee’s I Ching fortune. It was 1988, and Lee was 26, bored, and consulting the ancient oracle for fun with two siblings. The statement perplexed her. “An event of catastrophic proportions was unknown to me,” she writes in her debut memoir, Thunderclap, which Kirkus Reviews calls an “affecting and elegantly composed remembrance.”

“My life to that point had been relatively easy, requiring little reflection,” recalls Lee. But within weeks, she would come to understand the I Ching’s prediction when two major medical crises permanently altered her health and worldview.

Today, over three decades after the events related in Thunderclap, Lee, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, speaks and advocates for cancer patients and their families. Though a novice writer whose only prose had been college term papers and journaling, she felt compelled to share her story more broadly and trusted “a part of myself that knew what I had to do,” she says. She reworked her journals into essays and then worked with an editor to shape Thunderclap. Her persistence in using her voice as an advocate is remarkable given the history of silence around difficult topics that permeated her family.

Born in 1962, Lee was raised on the island of Guam with “traditional, Asian-influenced values” and sheltered from the tumult of the ’60s in the States. Her privileged family was headed by her grandfather Charles Corn, or “Papa,” a wealthy businessman around whom the extended family revolved. Along with her mother, father, and six siblings, Lee shared a sprawling, five-story home, known throughout the island as the “Pagoda,” with her grandparents and assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins. The Pagoda was a refuge for young Lee but also a confining space where children were kept under strict control. She recalls, “The Pagoda was our fortress, and like a fortress, it nurtured and protected us….It was a perfect haven from the unknown and, at times, frightening world outside.” Children were expected to be seen and not heard in this fortress, with playtime outdoors limited in order to keep their skin light. 

Silences pervaded the Lee home and profoundly affected the author, with her mother refusing to speak for extended periods to any child who misbehaved. When Papa died, Lee’s mother squabbled with her siblings over his estate, resulting in years of silence between them. “By then,” writes Lee, “the adults’ way of resolving things through silence had become an accepted and ordinary part of our lives.” Indeed, shortly thereafter, Lee stopped talking to one of her sisters, and as the family fortune slipped away, it happened without discussion or explanation.

Lee’s life took a turn when, as a teenager, she moved to San Francisco for one year. She writes with pride of how she blossomed in the charged environment of the city in the ’70s. A pretty adolescent, she began sporting designer clothes, a Vidal Sassoon haircut, and expertly applied makeup, and she found acceptance and freedom among gay male friends who, Lee recalls, “showered me with compliments and made me feel beautiful.” In 1980, she and the rest of the family moved to the city permanently. First love struck at age 22 when Lee met the gentle and sensitive Ali. Their courtship progressed over several years, and by the spring of 1988—when Lee read her fateful I Ching fortune—the couple was engaged and looking forward to building a family.

The “thunderclap” struck on an otherwise ordinary, sunny day, several months before her wedding date. Feeling fluish, Lee returned home to discover she had a 104-degree temperature, which persisted for weeks as symptoms worsened. Again she opted for silence in the face of a dismissive doctor who ordered no tests or intervention. Eventually the 26-year-old suffered a stroke, which she describes in harrowing detail:

Suddenly, I felt lightheaded…followed by a strong tingling sensation in my left arm….My left knee buckled, and I fell onto the bed….“What’s wrong with me? I’m going to die!” There was a stabbing pain in my throat. Within minutes, the entire left side of my body, from my face to my foot, had become completely paralyzed.

Adding to her trauma, tests at the hospital revealed she had acute myelogenous leukemia, curable only through a bone marrow transplant, chemotherapy, and intensive radiation that would leave her sterile.

Over months of treatment, therapy, and recovery from both the stroke and the leukemia, Lee’s childish concerns and outlook drained away. In one of the book’s strongest sections, the once self-absorbed fashionista writes movingly of the hospital nurses who buoyed her spirits, the painful end to her relationship with Ali, and her growing sense of empathy for the suffering of others. The young woman who rarely played outside as a child followed a full-time routine of physical therapy, classes, swimming, and extended outdoor walks, noticing for the first time the “shell-shocked” look of the AIDS-stricken men sharing her city in the ’80s. 

Five years after her bone marrow transplant, Lee was considered cured of cancer. But she never regained use of her left arm and today still has difficulty walking as a result of the stroke. Undeterred, she went on to earn her master’s degree in psychology, owns her own home, and has “led a very independent life.” She considers her memoir to be the most remarkable part of her long journey. 

“My hope is that Thunderclap will resonate with readers,” Lee says. She also hopes they understand that it’s possible to “not only survive, but thrive” in the wake of devastating life events. Having thrived for many years now, Lee is certainly a credible example, and her book will be inspiring to both survivors and current endurers of medical travails.

Lisa E. Reardon worked in the book and publishing industry for many years before founding Common Good Editorial in 2019