Category: True Story

It’s not a secret that mainstream feminist issues were decided by white, middle-to-upper-class women. Kendall argues that “food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care” are all feminist issues, and should be included in the narrative.

This is on a lot of “best of” lists this year. The Galvin family had 12 children born between 1945 and 1965. Six were diagnosed as schizophrenic, and the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. tw: abuse

Friendship book! Sow and Friedman are the hosts of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend and have been friends for more than ten years. In their Book of Friendship, they highlight the importance of “society’s most underappreciated relationship.” Roxane Gay said “This is the kind of book that makes you want to reach out to your best, biggest friends to say thank you.”

You know how nonfiction by poets can just hit differently? “As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these ‘minor feelings’ occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity.” If you missed this one this year, add it to your 2021 list.

My wife LOVES this book. “Four years ago, Glennon Doyle, author, activist and humanitarian, wife and mother of three—was speaking at a conference when a woman entered the room. Glennon looked at her and fell instantly in love.” This is her journey to build a life of her own, “one based on her individual desire, intuition, and imagination.” This feels like a good start-of-the-year sort of read.

This is part of Beacon Press’s ReVisioning American History series, written by two excellent historians. In fewer than 300 pages, they share the stories of enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and “women who lived outside the law.”

Let’s get the first point out of the way right away: Merlin Sheldrake is an amazing name. He covers yeast, he covers mushrooms, he covers “fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet.” It’s so neat!! We can’t see them, but they’re there! Love to round out a roundup with a fungi read.

It is the VERY FIRST full-length biography of Black suffragist Mary Church Terrell. Terrell was first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a founding member of the NAACP and worked with people like Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells. She also died in 1954, which blows my mind, because I can’t fathom someone working with Douglass and also knowing about I Love Lucy. But she did! Presumably.

I love a young readers adaptation. Sometimes you don’t have time for adult nonfiction but you still wanna learn about a thing. Roundtree was a civil rights activist and lawyer, winning a 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case. She was also an officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in WWII, and later became a minister. Basically she did absolutely everything. Side note: I love this cover.

Wright puts the idea out there that American Christianity’s slow embrace of abolition hinged on its millennarian (assumption the world’s about to end) beliefs. If you’re a nerd about early American history or want to read about how a dominant religion helped and hindered the end of enslavement in America, check this out. I’m really jazzed about it.

This is the week for reformer bios to be released! If the name Pankhurst sounds familiar, it’s basically the Pankhursts basically ruled the English suffragist movement, led by Sylvia and her sister Christabel’s mother, Emmeline. “The vote was just the beginning of her lifelong defence of human rights, from her early warnings of the rise of fascism in Europe, to her campaigning against racism and championing of the liberation struggles in Africa and India.” Basically, she did a ton and this new biography is here to tell you all about it.

Sometimes you just want to read a book about books. Or reading. Or how great reading about books is. There are chapters like “The Joy of Sesquipedalians,” “Never Do That to a Book,” and “My Catalogical Imperative.” Mmm, cozy.

The tales of a veterinarian from Yorkshire! For those unfamiliar with the TV adaptation, never fear, because a new one is coming to PBS in January. Nothing says something’s a cozy read like the adjectives “witty and heartwarming.”

Botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Kimmerer “shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass ― offer us gifts and lessons.” This was a bestseller and made a lot of “best book” lists. What’s cozier than essays like “The Gift of Strawberries” and “Epiphany in the Beans”?

This 1906 reflection on tea is not only a history of tea, but a reflection on the East and the West (again, grounded in the fact it was 1906) and the beauty of the present. Okakura writes: “The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of greatness in the smallest incidents of life.”

Hunt is an American journalist who has been living and working in London for a decade. Here we have her collection of essays on “what it means to be black, a woman, a mother, and a global citizen in today’s ever-changing world.” Wondering about the title? Read the first essay.

Y’know how sometimes you just want some history-related escapism, possibly in the form of a biography about a child-prodigy-turned-iconic-composer? Swafford has also written biographies of Beethoven and Brahms, so Mozart clearly had to be included through the means of a little backstep. If you’re a music nerd, or just curious about it, “it’s nearly impossible to understand classical music’s origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself.”

Stand-up comedian, host of The Circle, co-host of the podcast Adulting and more, Michelle Buteau is hilarious. Here she recounts stories from her career, her dating life, and how she met her Dutch photographer husband at a club (remember how that used to happen? or at least did in movies?). I’ll bet the audiobook of this is gonna be great.

Look at that fun cover. And from a university press book! Juavinett “provides a candid look at the field, offering practical guidance that explores everything from programming to personal stories.” This includes the history of neuroscience, how to apply to a PhD program, the daily life of a grad student, and more. I honestly want to read this just to know how all that goes, because dang, what a complicated field.

This came out THIS YEAR. Acclaimed singer/songwriter and subject of the film Coal Miner’s Daughter Loretta Lynn shares memories of her friendship with the utterly amazing and my first-dance-at-my-wedding-was-to-one-of-her-songs Patsy Cline. Loretta Lynn is extremely charming and her books are an easy read, so pick this up if you like nice things about nice people.

Yeah, like I’m not again recommending Mariah Carey’s book without still having read it. This book has five stars out of almost 5,000 ratings. That MEANS something. Learn more about the woman who not only gave us the greatest Christmas song of all time, but also “I don’t know her.” Legend. Icon. Mariah Carey.

You know who super loved this book? Kim, former runner of this newsletter and still-cohost of For Real. Lin-Manuel Miranda said “Wanna be an artist? Get this book.” She’s a REALLY good writer and if you haven’t heard her version of the cult song “Congratulations” from Hamilton, you are missing out.

Speaking of ICONS AND LEGENDS, here we have Billie Holiday’s 1956 memoir. Published three years before she passed away at the very young age of 44, Holiday tells the story of growing up in Baltimore, getting a record deal in the 1930s, and performing sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall. Let’s all listen to some Billie Holiday.

If you loved the very-popular-this-year So You Want to Talk About Race, you’ll probably be pretty into this “history of white male America and a scathing indictment of what it has cost us socially, economically, and politically.” I keep track of a LOT of new nonfiction, and there are very few I mark that I’m very excited about. This is one of them.

Harriet the Spy came out in 1964 and has been the cause of countless children starting to spy on their neighbors and be very revved up by the idea of an egg cream. But what about its author?: “As a children’s author and a lesbian, Fitzhugh was often pressured to disguise her true nature. Sometimes You Have to Lie tells the story of her hidden life and of the creation of her masterpiece, which remains long after her death as a testament to the complicated relationship between truth, secrecy, and individualism.”

Do you know how the internet works? Like really how it works? Well, here is a cartoon cat to explain to you the technical aspects of the Internet that you need in order to advocate for digital rights. I’m talking transport protocols, basic internet infrastructure, security and privacy, algorithms, and MORE. Sure, it sounds potentially overwhelming, but need I remind you of the cartoon cat.

Oh man, women’s history for December. This anthology comprises 18 separate portraits, with a focus on women of the Mexican Revolution, but also including women like Frida Kahlo and activist Emma Tenayuca. Each portrait is paired with a historical or literary piece by a contemporary writer who was inspired by their subject’s legacy.

This covers from the 1600s to the 2010s, and looks at United States history from some of the “more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations” that still exist. It goes from colonization to imperialism and beyond. Shorter than 300 pages, this might be a good beginning-of-2021 read for your list.

This book totally changed my ideas about the Pilgrims and early America. There can be a tendency to harken back to when everyone was kinder and better, etc, but the more you study history, the more you learn that people have always been horrible (and good! but also horrible). I will never think of Miles Standish the same way again.

The story of Thanksgiving is basically the story of a group of religious fanatics who came to a place where other people lived and then promptly started starving to death because they didn’t know how to farm the crops there. I grew up rolling my eyes at this “liberal” version of the story, but then I became an adult and read what is reported to have actually happened, and yep. Historian Silverman looks at what led to the Wampanoag/Pilgrim alliance and what destroyed it.

We know there’s a tendency to speak of Native Americans as one cohesive unit, when that is categorically false. In Sneve’s book, she focuses on how “Sioux women are the center of tribal life and the core of the tiospaye, the extended family. They maintain the values and traditions of Sioux culture, but their own stories and experiences often remain untold.” For this hundred page read, she combed through “the winter counts” and oral records of her ancestors to discover their past.

The place! England. The time! Mostly the 1940s. Imagine A League of Their Own, but with musicians instead of baseball players. Ivy Benson started her own band before the age of thirty and kept it going for forty years. The band became the BBC’s resident dance band in 1943, and were top of the bill at the London Palladium in 1944. Someone make a movie about it please?

In this collection, “preeminent civil rights attorneys and scholars of the past quarter-century weigh in on some of the most controversial aspects of race and the law.” Anita Allen, Chuck Lawrence, Michelle Alexander, and more offer “an unprecedented array of today’s most creative and brilliant thinking on race and the law.”

Masterpiece Theatre debuted in 1971, making next year its fiftieth year in existence. This history of the show combines interviews, photographs, commentary, and anecdotes. If you have any Downton Abbey or just British drama fans in your life, this seems like an especially good book gift for them.

This book is so specifically About a Thing, I’m going to entirely quote the publisher: “From the relationship between the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and Gumbs’s Shinnecock and enslaved ancestors to the ways echolocation changes our understandings of “vision” and visionary action, this is a masterful use of metaphor and natural models in the service of social justice.” It’s such an interesting idea! Check it out.

Before she revealed herself to the world, Chanel Miller was Emily Doe, the person whose victim impact statement to the man convicted of her sexual assault (sentence: six months) went viral. Miller’s recounting of her life and this extremely traumatic event and its aftermath is very, very well done. Pick up if you’re okay with something a bit heavier.

Poet and literary editor of Harriet Tubman Press, Buchanan uses her memoir to “explore her family’s legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society’s ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance.” Check it out if you’re interested in exploring identity.

GENDER amirite? I couldn’t do this list without a graphic memoir and Prince’s memoir is a nice look at what does it MEAN if you identify as a girl but you don’t fit in with the cultural signifiers (dresses, princesses, etc). Most of the book is her grappling with that. The resolution doesn’t take up much space, but does it need to, is the question.

Get this as an audiobook, for sure. I recommend that for basically any memoir by a comedian. Haddish went into the foster system as a teenager and after some issues, basically got told she could go to the Laugh Factory comedy camp or counseling. She clearly chose the former. She’s got such an awesome attitude about everything AND she’s hilarious, so we’re ending on this up note.

It is the FIRST volume of Obama’s presidential memoir. This goes from “young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world” and from his earliest political aspirations to being elected president in 2008. “We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.” This is a HUGE book, meaning metaphorically in the book world and also it is 768 pages. Wooooo!

If you enjoyed Bloom’s show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or her A+ YouTube vids, you’ll like this book. She goes deep into her past, meaning grade school and college stories, her struggles with mental illness and how she dealt with them, and there is even a MUSICAL chapter. She shows her career trajectory too, meaning basically how she went from making hilarious videos to having her own show. It’s great.

Described as an “indictment of the systemic and cultural bias facing plus-size people,” Gordon looks at “the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat” and discusses what fat activism can really look like in practice.

Flowers is the founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and was selected as a MacArthur Fellow this year. In her book, she talks about her life’s work: the fight for basic sanitation: “Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets, and, as a consequence, live amid filth.” This is the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice across the U.S. in California, Florida, Alaska, the Midwest, and more.