Category: True Story

Siddhartha Mukherjee is one of the best science writers out there. He manages to write stories that are both full of facts and full of feelings, using his personal experiences to give heart to even the driest subjects. In this book he tackles the history of the gene, the tool through which we understand so much of what it means to be human. The story covers centuries, from Aristotle to mapping the human genome, while also acknowledging how much we still have left to learn.

This book has one of my very favorite subtitles— it’s so evocative! It’s also a great read that interrogates our tendency to attribute our own values to animals… and shows how it sometimes works. Biologist Lucky Cooke tells stories of animals from across the animal kingdom, exploring the instincts and mysteries that we’re still trying to understand today. This one is a lot of fun!

The American South contains a diverse world of lived experiences. In this anthology, writers — like Kiese Laymon, Joy Priest, and Natalia Sylvester — examine what it means to be a person of color in the South. Set in places like doctor’s offices and DMVs, these essays tackle the topic of their lived experiences with race very differently, and contain unique perspectives that deserve to be heard. Editor Cinelle Barnes does a great job of collecting a range of different essayists in the collection, creating a truly incredible anthology that highlights some of today’s most talented writers in the modern South.

I had never read Annie Dillard before, so I thought this short book of essays would be a great place to start. Dillard possesses an ability to capture ideas in such beautiful ways. She’ll start talking about forming sentences and how long she feels that it takes, and I find myself completely engrossed with how she spent her afternoon. If you love books about writers and writing, then you will absolutely love this book.

In a world increasingly filled with misinformation and confusion, we can all use some time thinking about thinking. In this book mathemetician Eugenia Cheng looks at how we need both logical and emotional reasoning to live in the world. She looks at how logic works, some of its limitations, and the role of emotion in thinking and communication. I love that combination!

One of the classes I regret never taking in high school or college is statistics because it seems like stats comes up nearly everywhere. In this book, Charles Wheelan pulls back the “archane and technical details” of statistics to explain the intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key terms, reveals how statistics can be used for manipulation, and shows some of the key insights being pulled from current statistics experiments. I am jazzed to pick this one up!

Right after I graduated college, I realized my deteriorating health meant that I wouldn’t be able to do that job I’d been training for. In that mourning process, I discovered Jenny Lawson. In her first memoir Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson describes her quirky family, sharing stories about her dad’s obsession with taxidermy and her husband’s baptism by fire sort of introduction to her family. She strikes the perfect balance between describing the challenges she’s faced and the beautiful parts of life that make it all worth it. Lawson is both chronically and mentally ill, and she weaves that experience throughout her memoir and her following book, Furiously Happy and Broken (in the Best Possible Way). Reading about her wild family and the everyday things in life that brought her joy helped me process my own chronic illness and realize that, even though there are a lot of difficult things that we all experience as human beings, there’s also so much joy out there.

When I discovered Samantha Irby’s essays, I knew almost immediately that I had discovered a new-to-me favorite writer. Irby’s essays are both hilarious and emotionally impactful. Like Lawson, Irby has an incredible talent of using humor as a way to process the difficult things in her life. She first started writing as a blogger, sharing everything from takes on TV shows to fashion critiques, all with her incredible narrative voice. I especially appreciate her perspective as someone with chronic illness. There’s a certain kind of dark humor that thrives in our communities that I can never get enough of. While We Are Never Meeting in Real Life is my favorite, I also love Meaty and Wow, No Thank You. Whichever collection you choose, you are sure to have a good time!

Because of her parents’ work, Sophia Glock grew up all over the world, living in six countries by the time she was in high school. One day, she discovers a secret about her family—her parents are actually spies. Learning this secret right as she’s starting at a new school begins a process to better understand her life, her family, and herself. I just finished reading this one and liked it a lot. The “my parents are spies” aspect isn’t as prominent as I expected, but it’s still a great story about complicated friendships, teenage choices, and learning to be who you are.

Robin Ha grew up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea. That early experience was a challenge, but it formed a deep bond. When Robin is in high school, her mom announces that they are moving to Huntsville, Alabama, and that she is getting married. Robin has to attend a new school where she doesn’t speak the language, looses connection to her friends in Korea, and has to find her way with her new stepfamily. I love this book so much. The illustrations are beautiful, and Ha does an amazing job showing how difficult it was to understand her new school and community through her text and illustrations. It’s great!

Dr. William H. Turner has been writing about Black Appalachian history for decades. He edited essay collections and researched the vital role Black Appalachians had on the region. Harlan Renaissance focuses on the Black communities in Harlan, Kentucky, where Turner is originally from. Turner discusses how much of the country forgets the importance of Black communities in Kentucky, writing it off as a state with just a bunch of white people. The reality is more complex than that. I really appreciate Turner’s perspective and the care he put into this book. Harlan Renaissance is a brilliant piece of oral and recorded history that celebrates Black Appalachian culture.

In this follow up to her critically acclaimed book Dopesick, Beth Macy returns to Appalachia to describe the ongoing opioid crisis. In Raising Lazarus, Macy focuses on the efforts of folks around the region working to help those seeking recovery. From needle exchanges to prescription drugs thought to help people stay in recovery, Macy outlines the programs and details the challenges that different recovery programs face. While many judges and people in law enforcement believe that abstinence is the only option, Macy points out why that’s not necessarily the case. There’s no single path to recovery.

Set in August 1920, this book chronicles the fight to have the 19th Amendment ratified in Tennessee–the 36th and last state needed for the amendment. Forces on both sides of the debate converged in Nashville during a special session of the legislature. The book follows several women coming to the fight from different angles, looking at the ways they tried to influence and change the minds of the men voting–through “dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel’s, and the Bible.” This one is really fascinating!

This book offers an extended history of African American women’s political lives in the United States. It begins with the founding of the country and goes past the 1965 Voting Rights Act to show how Black women pushed against both racism and sexism to make change. She shared the oft-ignored work of Black women like Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Fannie Lou Hamer who helped lead the way for Black women’s enfranchisement.

I love a good story of an unlikely friendship, and Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano’s friendship is one of the best. When Morisano first bought the old Greyhound bus station in Savannah, he wasn’t sure what he’d do with it. But as an Italian white man from Long Island, he grew up with a profound love of food. Soon he was introduced to Mashama Bailey, a Black woman from Queens who also had family ties to Savannah. Soon they became partners in The Grey, a restaurant that brought them both National acclaim. You can even see them featured in an episode of Netflix’s popular Chef’s Table series.

Originally descended from enslaved West and Central Africans, the Gullah Geechee people have lived in the Lowcountry for generations, creating their own distinctive culture and language. Their cuisine focuses on natural resources found in the Lowcountry wetlands, often using rice and seafood. Of course, I had to grab a cookbook (in fact, I now have several), but one of my favorites is Bress ‘n’ Nyam. He tells his family history through the recipes he shares, many of which have been passed down for generations.

In 2013, 35 Atlanta Public Schools educators were charged with racketeering and conspiracy, which came as a result of being accused of changing answers on their students’ standardized tests. Nearly all of the teachers were Black. Shani Robinson, the youngest teacher charged with a crime, faced up to 25 years in prison. In this book, she partners with journalist Anna Simonton to look at how the Atlanta school system and leaders in the city historically failed Black students, leading directly to the cheating scandal. I can imagine an Orange is the New Black style adaptation for this one. 

I’m a sucker for stories about con men and women, which we also know can make great television adaptations. In this book, Abby Ellin writes about her relationship with a man she called the Commander – a whirlwind romance that led to their engagement after just six months. But soon his exotic stories stopped adding up, leading Ellin to discover he’d been lying from the start. The book also explores the art and science of lying and shares stories from other people duped by their romantic partners. I get a lot of Inventing Anna vibes from this one.

As a fan of My Brilliant Friend, I knew I wanted to read Ferrante’s nonfiction. So a few years ago, I picked up Frantumaglia, which contains a lot of essays that came out before the success of Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet. These essays discuss the reception of her novel, the film adaptations, and her thoughts about written and visual arts. Since Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym, these essays often feel like secret missives as Ferrante guards her identity while still engaging with her readers’ reaction to her work. I’ve read most of Ferrante’s novels and found it fascinating to see the publishing process from Ferrante’s perspective.

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of my favorite authors, so when I heard she was learning to write in Italian, I felt incredibly sad that I couldn’t read it. But I shouldn’t have worried. Elena Ferrante’s translator, Ann Goldstein, translated In Other Words into English. If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering why Lahiri didn’t translate the text herself, but Lahiri has stated that she wants readers to get a more accurate perception of her skills in Italian. This book is cleverly formatted to include the English translation on one side and the original Italian on the other. The topics of the essays mostly focus on Lahiri’s relationship with the Italian language and her motivation in learning it. This book is perfect for any language nerd.