By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer and Michelle Young, Co-Editor-in-Chief
I love books that breathe — that smile gently at me and invite me into their orbit; that ask, “Will you join me? Will you look at what you’ve been avoiding?” If you think non-fiction is about dry facts and dull history, this list is an invitation to reconsider.
How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
Jones’ memoir is a heart-wrenchingly honest account of growing up Black and gay in the American South. Born in Memphis to a Buddhist mother and an evangelical grandmother, Jones’s vignettes move through geographic and emotional landscapes in search of identity, understanding, and belonging. Written in a searing poetic prose that is equal parts fearful and courageous, Jones allows his full self to emerge in these pages — with all his multitudes and contradictions. In doing so, he invites the reader to confront the costs of surviving in a place that demands silence in exchange for safety.
Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
Known for her poetry, Oliver’s essays inspire quiet wonder. In Upstream, she writes about nature, solitude, and creativity with a luminous attentiveness that invites you to slow down and look around. Soft but stubborn in her clarity, she writes of the divinity of nature like a lover full of reverence and gratitude. In these lucid but grounded reflections, she explores what it means to belong to the world, to pay attention again to the gentle rhythm of the river and joyous birdsong.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
What seems like a productivity detox is, in reality, a deep philosophical excavation of attention. Odell gently guides you to reconsider: what if your worth wasn’t measured in output? Part meditation and part love letter to idleness (and birdwatching), she helps you reclaim your time. It is not so much about disconnecting as it is about reconnecting — with the present moment, with your community, with yourself.
Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq edited by Zlata Filipović and Melanie Challenger
This haunting collection of war diaries is a lesser-known but highly relevant anthology in this time of global catastrophe. Helping us to personalize and make real the war statistics we consume (or are consumed by), this book is a testament to adolescent wonder and resilience in the face of violence. It asks you to listen to voices we often overlook, to face the raw and unfiltered accounts of survival that remind us that peace must never be taken for granted.
In a world that asks us to scroll away, these books ask us to stay, to witness, to feel, to remember.
— Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer
Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles
Another author known for her poetry, Powles’ essays are just as descriptive and gravitational. Like water itself, her prose pulls you under the sea to explore identity and climate anxiety. She writes on recurring whale dreams, the exploitation of sea animals, and ponders how we can “write about nature without writing an elegy.” Weaving these themes with her experience of studying abroad in Shanghai and her mixed Chinese-Malaysian heritage, Powles interrogates how history has shaped the present day.
A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernández
This memoir explores the intersections of class, race, and sexuality in a vivid coming-of-age commentary on what it means to grow up Colombian-Cuban in the US. Hernández not only details her experience growing up, but also confronting racial biases in journalism — notably while working at The New York Times. This piece is sure to tug at the heartstrings for any part of the queer diaspora, but it especially touched me with its tinges of Spanish unapologetically sprinkled throughout the book.
— Michelle Young, Co-Editor-in-Chief
