I recommend you the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. he was considered a “resistance Palestine poet,” he was placed under house arrest when his poem “Identity Card” was turned into a protest song. My favorite poem of his is "I Have a Seat in the Abandoned Theater"
I adore Ross Gay's work! The Book of Delights was life changing and The Book of More Delights has been equally meaningful to me so far. I'm also (not very far along yet) reading How to Disappear by Akiko Busch which has raised a lot of thoughtful questions I'm still processing.
Ana if you would like to explore something that intersects radical philosophy and theology I have found ‘Freedom from the known’ by J. Krishnamurthy to be enlightening. Also talking about the mystical and elusive have you tried Rumi translator William Chittick? The book is called The sufi path of love.
And thank you for this amazing question, such brilliant recommendations all over- must be one the best comment section I have seen so far in substack!
Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas, Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso, Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, Men We Reaped by Jasmyn Ward, Girlhood by Melissa Febos...also like someone else recommended I love In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
I love this--I've been keeping a list on my bookshop page that lists a lot of these, although I need to reorganize the categories....
But some really powerful non fiction that has been staying with me:
The Witch of Eye by Cathatine Neurnberger (also a poet)
Green, Green, Green by Gillian Osborne
Heroines by Kate Zamberno (more autofiction/nonfiction)
Death by Landscape by Elvia Wilk
Dominion of the Dead by Robert Pogue Harrison (also Forest by him)
Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
Distance and Memory by Peter Davidson (includes art crit but mixed with memoir)
All that She Carried by Tiya Miles (just devastatingly beautiful and powerful)
Any and all James Baldwin
Zero at the Bone by Christian Wiman (also his other memoir My Bright Abyss)
Into Great Silence by Eva Saulitis
Decreation by Anne Carson
Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Rueffle
An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky
Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane
for nf canon, I think the heavy hitters are always Baldwin, Didion, Sontag, Montaigne, etc. Even Solnit at this point really. It's an interesting question to ponder!
Thank you Freya! I'm not surprised that I love your list- a mix of books I've read and loved, books I want to read, and some I've yet to discover. Thank you!! Also- I am a huge Zambreno fan and will read anything she writes.
For non-fiction about diaspora: Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora. I haven’t finished it yet, but as the daughter/niece/cousin of several Salvadoran immigrants it hits close to home.
For the other list:
- Rebel Radio by José Ignacio López Vigil
- The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
Thank you so much for all of these! *Solito* is actually on my list for the diaspora independent study, so I'll be reading it this semester! I've read nearly everything Butler has written but the others you named are new to me and I'm excited to check them out!
What an interesting question. I’m not sure I have great answers aside from that list of Indigenous writers I emailed you a while back. Though there are some young adult novels that fit the diaspora theme. I wish YA got more respect! Some of the best stories are there. (I’m thinking of “Darius the Great Is Not Okay,” by Adib Khorram, and “The Night Diary,” by Veera Hiranandani.)
The Indigenous book list you gave me is so amazing, and it's also in the chute for a post in my other newsletter (where I will of course credit you!!).
A few books that I have never been able to let go:
1. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. A work of nonfiction about a Hmong child who has epilepsy and how her family tries to navigate American/western medical system when it so clearly does not acknowledge their culture.
2. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. A novel that takes place in 1975 in rural and urban India. It is harrowing.
3. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I have rarely read an author who writes so beautifully.
Thank you Camila! I remember reading Fadiman's book about a decade ago and it blew my mind. I need to read it again. I also loved A Little Life! But I haven't read A Fine Balance, so I will check that out!!
Some NF I’ve found illuminating in the past decade.
Empire of things by Frank Trentmann
- too big probably, but you could select an essay from it. Blew my mind by connecting up things I’d never thought of.
Threads of Life: A history of the world through the eye of a needle byClare Hunter
or
The Golden Thread: How fabric changed history by Cassia St Clair
- the history of textiles is a history of suppressed voices, capitalism and colonization. Both of these are excellent. Couldn’t choose between them.
Rest is Resistence Tricia Hersey
- no notes necessary
Lowborn by Kerry Hudson
- a story from the UK. I liked the nuance.
Talking to my daughter about the economy: a history of capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis
- readable, informative
The examined life by Stephen Grosz
- essays about being human, I return to this again and again
Cultural Amnesia by Clive James
- Another behemoth. Kaleidoscopic. James had a distinct voice.
Black and British by David Olusogu
- its often easier to absorb ideas critical of your own society when you read similar criticisms about another society... with less skin in the game there is less resistance, maybe?
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
- a memoir of the second generation migrant experience. She writes beautifully.
No Friend but the mountains: writing from Manus prison by Behrouz Boochani
- on my tbr list because its highly emotive for me (an Aussie) but so highly rated I’m willing to include it without direct experience.
I absolutely love that I haven't heard of any of these!! I am gonna go through and check them all out. Also, thank you for suggesting possible excerpts and essays because that's super helpful for me. 🩵
This seems like a bonkers task!! Read 150 books in a year and somehow remember all of them! My favorite non fiction books recently have been We Were Once a Family about the Hartt Family murders and child welfare/family separation, Evicted, and On the Line by Daisy Pitkin about friendship and union organizing!
There was a time when I planned on pursuing a PhD, but the struggles that came with my MA quickly disabused me of those thoughts. I miss some of the coursework and the research. Something about citing sources is so satisfying but God damn it doni hate academic writing.
A "nonfiction canon", I love this concept! I can think of a few things I think would be essential to something like this, but I'm not sure they quite fit the parameters of what you'd like to see on your list. When I think nonfiction "classics" I think of Augustine's Confessions and Montaigne's Essays. Jumping ahea I think Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, may be good choices. And anything by Joan Didion.
Hopefully some part of this helpful. I'd love to see the final list you come up with. Good luck!
Ok one hand I'm glad I'm not totally off base, but I'm disappointed I wasn't able to offer you more to work with. Now, I'm invested, challenge accepted, lol.
Teresa of Avila - The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection
Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love
Judith Butler - Gender Trouble
James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time
Franz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth
John Green - The Anthropocene Reviewed - while I'm note sure this deserves to be considered a "classic" I think it's a really interesting snap shot of cultural precedent
This isn't a specific book but if I were compiling a list it would include works from Michel de Montaigne, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, G.K. Chesterton, Jorge Luis Borges, Zadie Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, Albert Camus, David Foster Wallace, Haruki Murakami, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Ivan Turgenev, Natalia Ginzburg and I could go on. I love essayists and creative nonfiction.
Jamie is one of Luis's buddies. I've workshopped with Jamie and hung out with both of them at Fishtrap. Beth is an emerging writer, from the Nez Perce people.
I recommend you the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. he was considered a “resistance Palestine poet,” he was placed under house arrest when his poem “Identity Card” was turned into a protest song. My favorite poem of his is "I Have a Seat in the Abandoned Theater"
Thank you Mariana! I am grateful for this recommendation.
Love him. “extreme clarity is a mystery”
The one book stuck in my head after reading this is Carmen María Machado's IN THE DREAM HOUSE.
Omg it is STILL on my list to read but I have a physical copy at home so I will be reading it soon!
It is an INTENSE read but so, so good. I just love her style and her implementation brings something so fresh to creative nonfiction.
I adore Ross Gay's work! The Book of Delights was life changing and The Book of More Delights has been equally meaningful to me so far. I'm also (not very far along yet) reading How to Disappear by Akiko Busch which has raised a lot of thoughtful questions I'm still processing.
Thank you Kelsey!! I also love Ross Gay but need to read more. And I haven't read How to Disappear: writing that one down!
Ana if you would like to explore something that intersects radical philosophy and theology I have found ‘Freedom from the known’ by J. Krishnamurthy to be enlightening. Also talking about the mystical and elusive have you tried Rumi translator William Chittick? The book is called The sufi path of love.
And thank you for this amazing question, such brilliant recommendations all over- must be one the best comment section I have seen so far in substack!
Swarnali, thank you so much!! I have gotten so many amazing suggestions and this is one of them- can't wait to read it. 💕
Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas, Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso, Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, Men We Reaped by Jasmyn Ward, Girlhood by Melissa Febos...also like someone else recommended I love In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Autobiography of a Face is a book I've read several times (and written about in the newsletter). Thank you for naming it!
I love this--I've been keeping a list on my bookshop page that lists a lot of these, although I need to reorganize the categories....
But some really powerful non fiction that has been staying with me:
The Witch of Eye by Cathatine Neurnberger (also a poet)
Green, Green, Green by Gillian Osborne
Heroines by Kate Zamberno (more autofiction/nonfiction)
Death by Landscape by Elvia Wilk
Dominion of the Dead by Robert Pogue Harrison (also Forest by him)
Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
Distance and Memory by Peter Davidson (includes art crit but mixed with memoir)
All that She Carried by Tiya Miles (just devastatingly beautiful and powerful)
Any and all James Baldwin
Zero at the Bone by Christian Wiman (also his other memoir My Bright Abyss)
Into Great Silence by Eva Saulitis
Decreation by Anne Carson
Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Rueffle
An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky
Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane
for nf canon, I think the heavy hitters are always Baldwin, Didion, Sontag, Montaigne, etc. Even Solnit at this point really. It's an interesting question to ponder!
Can't wait to read what others have loved! 📚
Thank you Freya! I'm not surprised that I love your list- a mix of books I've read and loved, books I want to read, and some I've yet to discover. Thank you!! Also- I am a huge Zambreno fan and will read anything she writes.
Yay! Me too, Zambreno is fabulous. 💜
So much love to this list! I’m running a Witch of Eye reading circle in March 💕
hooray! so love that book—i find myself returning to it so often. That’s so great you’re running a reading circle of it! 💜
For non-fiction about diaspora: Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora. I haven’t finished it yet, but as the daughter/niece/cousin of several Salvadoran immigrants it hits close to home.
For the other list:
- Rebel Radio by José Ignacio López Vigil
- The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Thank you so much for all of these! *Solito* is actually on my list for the diaspora independent study, so I'll be reading it this semester! I've read nearly everything Butler has written but the others you named are new to me and I'm excited to check them out!
Oh yay! I’ll be watching your writings for mentions of Solito - I have to make sure I finish it soon so we can talk about it!
Becky chambers! yay! 👏
I just finished Psalm for a Wild-Built and I was SOBBING at the end. So so so good.
What an interesting question. I’m not sure I have great answers aside from that list of Indigenous writers I emailed you a while back. Though there are some young adult novels that fit the diaspora theme. I wish YA got more respect! Some of the best stories are there. (I’m thinking of “Darius the Great Is Not Okay,” by Adib Khorram, and “The Night Diary,” by Veera Hiranandani.)
The Indigenous book list you gave me is so amazing, and it's also in the chute for a post in my other newsletter (where I will of course credit you!!).
It’s my science writers friends who did most of that. Nested circles of collaborative compiling here!
A few books that I have never been able to let go:
1. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. A work of nonfiction about a Hmong child who has epilepsy and how her family tries to navigate American/western medical system when it so clearly does not acknowledge their culture.
2. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. A novel that takes place in 1975 in rural and urban India. It is harrowing.
3. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I have rarely read an author who writes so beautifully.
Good luck on making your list.
Thank you Camila! I remember reading Fadiman's book about a decade ago and it blew my mind. I need to read it again. I also loved A Little Life! But I haven't read A Fine Balance, so I will check that out!!
Some NF I’ve found illuminating in the past decade.
Empire of things by Frank Trentmann
- too big probably, but you could select an essay from it. Blew my mind by connecting up things I’d never thought of.
Threads of Life: A history of the world through the eye of a needle byClare Hunter
or
The Golden Thread: How fabric changed history by Cassia St Clair
- the history of textiles is a history of suppressed voices, capitalism and colonization. Both of these are excellent. Couldn’t choose between them.
Rest is Resistence Tricia Hersey
- no notes necessary
Lowborn by Kerry Hudson
- a story from the UK. I liked the nuance.
Talking to my daughter about the economy: a history of capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis
- readable, informative
The examined life by Stephen Grosz
- essays about being human, I return to this again and again
Cultural Amnesia by Clive James
- Another behemoth. Kaleidoscopic. James had a distinct voice.
Black and British by David Olusogu
- its often easier to absorb ideas critical of your own society when you read similar criticisms about another society... with less skin in the game there is less resistance, maybe?
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
- a memoir of the second generation migrant experience. She writes beautifully.
No Friend but the mountains: writing from Manus prison by Behrouz Boochani
- on my tbr list because its highly emotive for me (an Aussie) but so highly rated I’m willing to include it without direct experience.
I absolutely love that I haven't heard of any of these!! I am gonna go through and check them all out. Also, thank you for suggesting possible excerpts and essays because that's super helpful for me. 🩵
Yay! I’m an Aussie with an audible uk account so just enough different from north america.
Exactly what I am looking for.
This seems like a bonkers task!! Read 150 books in a year and somehow remember all of them! My favorite non fiction books recently have been We Were Once a Family about the Hartt Family murders and child welfare/family separation, Evicted, and On the Line by Daisy Pitkin about friendship and union organizing!
There was a time when I planned on pursuing a PhD, but the struggles that came with my MA quickly disabused me of those thoughts. I miss some of the coursework and the research. Something about citing sources is so satisfying but God damn it doni hate academic writing.
A "nonfiction canon", I love this concept! I can think of a few things I think would be essential to something like this, but I'm not sure they quite fit the parameters of what you'd like to see on your list. When I think nonfiction "classics" I think of Augustine's Confessions and Montaigne's Essays. Jumping ahea I think Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, may be good choices. And anything by Joan Didion.
Hopefully some part of this helpful. I'd love to see the final list you come up with. Good luck!
Four out of the five texts you named are on my list already!! So, definitely fits my parameters.
Unfortunately my MFA was amazing...so I totally took it for granted and figured all programs were amazing like that. I'm learning... 🙃
Ok one hand I'm glad I'm not totally off base, but I'm disappointed I wasn't able to offer you more to work with. Now, I'm invested, challenge accepted, lol.
Teresa of Avila - The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection
Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love
Judith Butler - Gender Trouble
James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time
Franz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth
John Green - The Anthropocene Reviewed - while I'm note sure this deserves to be considered a "classic" I think it's a really interesting snap shot of cultural precedent
Thomas Merton - The Seven Story Mountain
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Dogen Zenji - Shobogenzo
Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I'm having way too much fun with this lol.
This is exactly what I was looking for! Thank you!
My pleasure! Books and lists, what's not to love?!
This isn't a specific book but if I were compiling a list it would include works from Michel de Montaigne, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, G.K. Chesterton, Jorge Luis Borges, Zadie Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, Albert Camus, David Foster Wallace, Haruki Murakami, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Ivan Turgenev, Natalia Ginzburg and I could go on. I love essayists and creative nonfiction.
Also sorry for my English, not my first language.
You're welcome! And check out the faculty that Fishtrap brings in...some interesting voices there.
Robin Wall Kimmerer. Luis Alberto Urrea. Jamie Ford. Beth Piatote.
Check 'em out.
Thank you, Joyce! I've written about Kimmerer here: https://aplaceforwriters.substack.com/p/nature-as-respite?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Fgathering%2520moss&utm_medium=reader2. I also was in workshop with Urrea! And I will check out your other two suggestions!
Jamie is one of Luis's buddies. I've workshopped with Jamie and hung out with both of them at Fishtrap. Beth is an emerging writer, from the Nez Perce people.
Really looking forward to checking out Beth's work! I see she's an academic, too. Thank you for introducing me!