Category: True Story

While Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s mother is Japanese, her father comes from a family of wheat farmers in Nebraska. After spending years getting to know her family in Japan, Mockett decides that her next writing project will look at her father’s family. Every year, migratory harvesters arrive at the family farm to help harvest the wheat. So, Mockett decides to travel with the harvesters to get to know them and better understand their world. Starting in Texas, Mockett travels with the group of men and women for weeks as they make their way up to Nebraska. Mockett discovers she carries a lot of assumptions about this more conservative group of blue-collar workers and begins to challenge her own perception of their lives. This book proved endlessly fascinating for me as Mockett began to better understand the world of her father’s family and the people who helped them out on the farm. She portrays herself in all of her messy humanity, making mistakes along the way but always looking to better understand the people around her.

Sarah Smarsh is the first woman in many generations of her family to go to college instead of starting a family right away. After breaking this family norm, Smarsh begins to think about her life as a working-class girl from Kansas and tries to better understand where she comes from. Focusing on the different generations of women in her family, she looks at the history of the heartland and the people who live there. Her prose is intimate, practical, and straightforward. Every word pulls its weight as Smarsh describes her childhood living with a family just trying to scrape by. As a teen, she didn’t have time for a lot of friends or boyfriends; she was going to college. I appreciated Smarsh’s take on her hometown, both the good and the bad. She perfectly captures the feeling of not being able to stay home and achieve your dreams. But having left, you know you will never be able to return, and nothing will ever be the same.

Heading into Monsters, I had imagined that it would be instructive or at least informative. But instead, Monsters is more a memoir of the author taking us along her thought process as she wrangles with the age-old question, can we separate the art from the artist? Dederer looks at a series of great artists (mostly men) who have done horrible things and asks herself how much her knowledge of their biographies impacts the way she engages with their art. Over and over, she poses this question as she discusses terrible person after person. Monsters would make a great pick for book clubs that love to discuss the theory and philosophy of living. Or maybe you want to discuss this topic with a friend. Monsters doesn’t come to a singular conclusion but rather poses a series of questions for readers to engage with, for us to make our decisions about the art we are willing to consume.

Enjeti and her family moved to the South when she was small. Since then, she’s called the South her home. But as a mixed-race Brown girl, many people there didn’t necessarily make her feel welcome. Now an adult, Enjeti writes about her experience with racism as well as her complicity in systemic racism. These essays feature her thoughts on feminism, the new South, gun violence, voter suppression, and so much more. Enjeti’s South is different than you might imagine. It’s complex, vibrant, and ever-changing.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1975. Dillard, a master prose stylist, describes her life at Tinker Creek. She chronicles the changing of the seasons and shares the comings and goings of the other living creatures around her. There’s just something beautiful about the calm her writing creates. I love her ability to see the tiniest things and communicate their vast importance to the reader. She has an obsession with parasites and the way they exist in the world. Admittedly, I don’t share this fascination, but I respect the way she loves them.

In 2019, Sarah M. Broom won the National Book Award for The Yellow House, which follows the story of her family and their connection to New Orleans. She describes her family’s history through the Yellow House, the childhood home that her mother owned for decades. We learn about Broom’s family history and the history of New Orleans. Her writing is vibrant and engrossing. You come to love her family and the Yellow House. This book is such a beautiful work of nonfiction, and I can’t recommend it enough.

For years, Naomi Klein has found herself continuously confused with Naomi Wolfe. They are both Jewish women who have historically moved through feminist spaces. But in the last decade, Wolfe has steadily become more connected with extremist right-wing politics. In this one-of-a-kind book, Klein details the history of the confusion and misidentification the two women have experienced online. From there, Klein expands into what she calls the mirror world, a place where men like Steve Bannon go off about stolen elections and forced mask mandates. Wolfe joins Bannon on his popular podcast, which astounds Klein as she listens to Wolfe’s guest appearance after guest appearance. Doppelganger is a fascinating look at the evolution of American politics and how we got to the chaos that we’re experiencing now.

bell hooks’ backlist is slowly but surely being turned into audio editions, so I’ve been making my way through them. Most recently, I picked up Breaking Bread, which is a series of conversations between bell hooks and Cornel West, two of the greatest minds of their generation. I’ve sometimes wondered what it would be like to sit in on conversations like this, and Breaking Bread brings us in on that conversation. hooks and Cornel describe their experience being in community as Black intellectuals. They include essays about each other, showing such admiration for each other’s work. It’s a beautiful testament to their friendship and mutual respect.

As I chopped vegetables, made cranberry sauce, and prepped my turkey brine, I listened to Thin Skin by Jenn Shapland. In her essay collection, Jenn has several long pieces about her experience traveling alone and the role that clothes have played throughout her life. With each of these base ideas, she connects her personal experiences to ideas in wider society. For example, in her essays about clothes, she ties together ideas of consumerism and how clothes help us perform societal expectations. I was struck over and over again by how Shapland’s work contains multiple layers of depth and meaning. Her prose feels so intentional, as if she’s already thought of and discarded every other possible way of expressing what she wants to say.

Just a few hours ago, I saw that the second season of Netflix’s High on the Hog has been released! Based on Jessica B. Harris’ book of the same name, the docuseries chronicles how enslaved Africans brought their culinary traditions to America. In her book, Harris describes how African cooks created one of the primary foundations for American cuisine as we know it today. She follows African American foodways, describing the growth of Black Southern cooking and how those food traditions traveled across the country during the great migration. High on the Hog is a must-read book (and now a must-watch docuseries) for any food lover.

“I loved poetry. It was singing on paper.” In this memoir of her early life, Joy Harjo describes her experience coming into her own as a young woman and as a poet. Harjo, of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, describes how the stories passed down to her sparked her imagination. She paid close attention to the plants, trees, and animals around her, taking her time to better understand the natural world. On the audio edition, Harjo gives a stunning performance, often singing the poems in the text rather than just reciting them.

Back in 2016, Jesmyn Ward edited this phenomenal collection of essays responding to the ideas in James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. The collection includes writers like Kiese Laymon, Edwidge Danticat, Honoree Jeffers, Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Clint Smith, Claudia Rankine, Isabel Wilkerson, and more. Ward’s essay centers around the idea that knowing where you come from is a privilege that many Black people don’t have. Through the course of the essay, she describes how she bought her parents DNA tests. Her dad found out that he was 51% percent Native American. Eventually, her dad was able to reconnect with his Indigenous heritage by enrolling with the Choctaw of Slidell, Louisiana.

Many of us remember the incredibly popular Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, in which Dee Henderson argued that Indigenous culture functionally ended at the massacre at Wounded Knee. But in The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Ojibwe writer David Truer writes about how Indigenous cultures across Turtle Island are very much alive. Following Indigenous history from 1890 to the present, Truer features interviews and research about Indigenous peoples preserving and celebrating their cultures. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee presents an Indigenous history that is very much alive and ongoing.

Investigative journalist Tanya Talaga writes about the long-lasting impact of residential schools on Indigenous youth today. In the 1960s, a 12-year-old Indigenous boy froze to death while trying to escape a residential school. Talaga follows how this boy’s death is connected to the deaths of seven Indigenous high school students from 2000 to 2011. Talaga combs through archives and interviews Indigenous elders, students, and school administrators, illustrating how this one northern, small-town school is emblematic of Canada’s history of settler colonial violence against Indigenous peoples across the continent.

Before Eyeliner, Zahra Hankir edited a collection of Arab women journalists reporting from the Arab world. Palestine, Egypt, Yemen, Syria — these journalists report on wars, uprisings, and protests. From their vantage point, they are able to tell stories that male journalists would never have access to in their own work. They center women’s experiences as they write about sexual assault or trying to travel without a male relative. Western society often carries a lot of assumptions about the Middle East. These brave Arab women are here to tell their own stories, risking everything to bring their much-needed perspective of their home regions.

After the memoir Hillbilly Elegy hit shelves, everyone began crafting their own opinions about the region. J.D. Vance certainly had his. In Appalachian Reckoning, writers from a wide range of backgrounds respond to Vance’s memoir, sharing what they feel he got wrong (or right, in some cases). Meredith McCarroll and Anthony Harkins write about how they wanted to give Appalachian people a platform to respond to the now incredibly famous book that painted all of Appalachia —millions of people across 13 states — with a single brush. But Appalachia, just like the rest of America, is not a monolith.

Hall’s gorgeous book delves into the world of planting crops by the signs in the stars. It’s a beautiful blend of culture, folklore, and foodways rooted in generations of tradition. Hall talks to central and eastern Kentuckians who have been planting by the signs for decades. They all have their own traditional practices of crop planting. Some gardeners plant by the phases of the moon, while others use the stars to guide their lives as a whole. Wilson’s photos are stunning, making this book an incredible gift for any gardener or general plant lover.

Former Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X Walker coined the term “Affrilachian” to refer to the unique experiences of Black Appalachians. A is for Affrilachia is a beautiful children’s alphabet book that highlights the accomplishments of Affrilachian people across the region. In the back of the book, there is more detail on each of the people, places, or things mentioned, giving adults more information to share with the kids in their lives. It’s a great way to start conversations about the importance of Affrilachian people to the region. This book makes a great gift, and I’ve already bought several copies for baby showers and birthday presents.

In one of my favorite memoirs of the year, Cristina Rivera Garza chronicles how she tries to track down her sister’s last days before she was murdered. Rivera Garza interviews Liliana’s friends at university, goes through her journals, and looks through official documents. But Liliana’s Invincible Summer is not a true crime story. Instead, it’s a beautiful testament celebrating Liliana’s life and the joy she brought to the world.

Nicole Chung is one of my favorite nonfiction writers. From her memoir All You Can Ever Know to her newsletter for The Atlantic, Chung writes with such vulnerability and clarity. A Living Memory follows Chung’s experience with the death of her father and her mother’s diagnosis of cancer. But when the pandemic arrives, Chung finds herself unable to be with her mother in her last days. This memoir is so intimate, so heart-rending, as Chung voices what many of us experience when a loved one passes away and we can’t be there for them. A Living Memory is truly a stunning book.