Some Nonfiction Favorites from 2022

Danielle Geller grew up estranged from her mother, an alcoholic who loved her daughters but lost custody when they were small. In her 20s, Geller receives a phone call that her mother has been admitted to a Florida hospital and may not live much longer. At that moment, they hadn’t spoken in more than six months. Geller heads down to Florida and discovers that her mother’s life can be packed up in just eight suitcases. She finds one filled with diaries, photos, letters, photo negatives, and some sage. She brings this one home, then uses the contents to try and excavate her mother’s life. This book is a memoir of her childhood, and the story of reconnecting with her family and understanding the mistakes they all made. This one is really difficult to read, but it was incredibly beautiful, too. 

This book got on my radar after winning this year’s Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and it’s basically ruined most other nonfiction since I read it. Reporter Andrea Elliott spent eight years chronicling the life of Dasani, a young girl growing up homeless in Brooklyn. Through this reporting, Elliott puts a face and family at the center of the homeless crisis, tracing it back through history and through the institutions that are part of the problem as well as a potential solution. It’s a huge, beautiful, heartbreaking book I could not put down.