Category: True Story

When a new friend insisted that I needed to read Annie Dillard, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t quite have his literary taste down yet. But when I read The Writing Life, I got the hype. And just last month, I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a gorgeous book of essays that pulls from nature writing traditions. Dillard gives you a multi-seasonal portrait of the world around Tinker Creek, the many creatures that live there, and their life cycles. She writes about the complexity of plants, fish, birds, and bugs — like, A LOT of bugs. I must admit, I was a bit overwhelmed by her fascination with common parasites. But she kind of has a point. The living beings all around us have multifaceted, mesmerizing lives. If only we take the time to look.

Shortly after finishing A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I picked up How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. Chee has an essay about studying with Annie Dillard and details much of her writing advice. His picture of her often feels like one of Dillard’s portraits of some animal or plant she describes in her writing. But this time, Dillard is the one being studied. Chee also writes about his time as a gay rights activist while living in San Francisco in the early 1990s. He has a way of writing about people that capture all those tiny details that make their characterizations seem so true to life.

Back in 2018, Roxane Gay edited an anthology of stories of people who have experienced sexual assault. The essays feature people from all paths of life, and each writer has their own unique story to tell. The contributors include Gabrielle Union, Brandon Taylor, Amy Jo Burns, and Lyz Lenz. When this came out, more and more people were stepping up and telling their #MeToo stories, giving voice to the reality that people live with the long-term effects of sexual assault every day. On the audiobook, each contributor reads their own essay, adding a deeply personal touch to the audio edition.

To date, What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About remains one of the best written anthologies that I’ve ever read. Across the board, these essays have incredible prose and ask the reader to reexamine their assumption about the mother-child relationship and the many dynamics at play. Some of the writers have great relationships with their mothers, but most don’t, and are constantly working to process their childhood and set boundaries as adults in the present.

Recently I’ve been reading back through Jeannie Vanasco’s incredible memoir Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. She begins the book by explaining how she is taking readers along with her experience interviewing the man who sexually assaulted her years ago. They used to be friends, and Vanasco explains that she still hasn’t processed everything that happened. Vanasco has this seamless way that she breaks through the 4th wall. She explains her thought process to her readers, asking questions and thinking through different scenarios.

Randall Kenan is a treasure of American Literature. Kenan grew up in rural North Carolina. In his essays, he describes his childhood with vibrant nature imagery. As a gay Black boy growing up in the mid-20th century, he loved where he grew up, but he always felt out of place. His prose is so moving, and he makes you think about the world in such unique ways. Randall Kenan might be more well-known for his fiction, but his nonfiction is equally stunning.

Narrated by Adenrele Ojo

In the last several years, bell hooks’ books have been slowly turned into audiobooks. Sisters of the Yam was released on audio just last year. The book focuses around hooks’ ideas of self-recovery. She begins Sisters of the Yam by discussing how Black women don’t need self-help, a genre hooks believes doesn’t typically take Black women’s experiences with sexism, homophobia, and racism into account. Instead, hooks calls for self-recovery, which centers on Black women taking care of their physical, mental, and emotional needs. By becoming the best version of themselves, Black women can better support their families and communities.

Narrated by Hala Alyan, Joy Sullivan, Kate Baer

Pushkin has just released a special edition of Mary Oliver’s essay collection Upstream. Performed by poets Hala Alyan, Joy Sullivan, and Kate Baer, Upstream includes a special introduction by each narrator, explaining why they love and have been inspired by Mary Oliver’s work. The narrators perform different sections of the essay collection, which focuses around Oliver’s favorite poets and her thoughts on writing. Oliver’s prose is stunning. She draws from her background as a poet to create perfect descriptions of the natural world. The performances take this audiobook to the next level.

Stacy Jane Grover grew up in Southeastern Ohio, not really viewing herself as Appalachian. But as she moved through the world —transitioning as a teen, falling in and out of love, and trying to find a career— she slowly began engaging with the idea. Grover illustrates a way of being that we don’t often read in literature. Much of trans history focuses on urban centers, but Grover tells a different story where she grew up with her family having a different understanding of who she was. Her grandfather just called her “shy,” which in her region of Appalachia just meant a sort of difference that was accepted, if not understood.

Lamya H figured out she was gay as a teenager in a Muslim school while living in a country in the Middle East. When she moved to America for university, she began to slowly come to terms with her sexuality and what that might mean for her life as a Muslim person. However, she constantly ran into non-Muslim people who told her she couldn’t be Muslim AND queer. That’s not how it worked. Lamya disagreed, finding her own way of being as a queer Muslim. Lamya structures her memoir around different figures from the Qur’an, weaving figures from her faith with her own story.

*Finalist for Bisexual Nonfiction

I first read Hauser’s essay “The Crane Wife” for a class I am taking. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to read the entire collection. And I’m so glad I did. Hauser likes to braid together different topics or moments from their life to create a more complete picture. The essays possess such a strong narrative voice. We feel along with Hauser as they share their mishaps with their family and their romantic entanglements. One could argue that the majority of the essays revolve around Hauser’s relationships with other people, and how different people in their life have taught them how to exist in the world as the best version of themself. Hauser also reads the audiobooks, giving a lovely performance that made me feel like I was sitting in a bookshop or cafe listening as they did an author reading.

*Finalist for Best Lesbian Memoir/Biography

Neema Avashia grew up in a small West Virginia town, and her family was one of a few South Asian families in the area. Her parents immigrated from India so her dad could work at a large plant in rural Appalachia. Avashia shares about her childhood spent hiking around the mountains and playing basketball. She learned key Appalachian values like community care and mutual aid. But she and her family also experienced a lot of racism from the white people in her area. One of my favorite essays is one where Avashia describes how her basketball coach became such an important figure in her life. But leading up to and after the 2016 election, her former coach started posting incredibly racist and anti-immigrant messages on his social media. She wonders how someone who claims to care for her like a daughter could post such hateful things about her and her family?

In this anthology from Midwestern indie press Belt Publishing, Williamson has brought together Black writers from around the Midwest, Rust Belt, and the Great Plains. Some of the writers share their experiences living in Midwestern cities. Others share what it’s like being from the country. But whatever part of the region that they are from, each writer has a story to tell. Some pieces focus on cultural commentary, pushing back against cultural narratives that erase the Black experience from the Midwest. Some contributors share personal essays about their specific lived experience. This is a fascinating read full of so many new-to-me writers!

Also from Belt Publishing, Midwest Futures examines what the future holds for the region. Originally home to vast swaths of farmland and hundreds of factories, the Midwest is now struggling. Factories are closing and farming has become more and more monopolized. Christman takes a look into the heart of the Midwest and its possible futures. He explores Midwestern culture and identity, its past and how its history impacts its present and future. The book is made up of several essays, each looking at the region from a different angle, and together creating a complete picture.

Elliot Page came out as trans after struggling with his identity for his entire life. Assigned female at birth, Page made a career for himself playing women on the big screen, receiving a nomination for his role as the lead character in Juno. But behind-the-scenes, Page felt miserable as he was stuffed into expensive dresses and pushed to behave in a more feminine way. Page narrates the audiobook edition, bringing such a personal touch to his story.

In her Audie-winning performance, Viola Davis narrates her memoir Finding Me. We follow her childhood growing up in a poor family in Rhode Island. Many of Davis’ memories are of listening to the rats scurrying around her bedroom, and waking up to rat bites and the faces of her dolls being chewed off. But she found comfort in theater, pursuing her passion to college, an institution none of her family members had ever been to before. She performs her story with such an incredible connection with her text, refusing to shy away from the emotion she feels while performing her story.

I’ve been listening to audiobooks for my entire life, but I’ve never read a history of them! Rubery has compiled a detailed history of the “talking book,” as they were first known. From the very first moments of the initial invention of sound recording, people began to ask questions around what would happen if they recorded a book onto audio? For decades they didn’t have the funds or other resources to make recording widely available. Rubery covers the role disability played in pushing technology forward. I loved how detailed this history was, and think it’s the perfect choice for audiobook reading.

Samantha Irby is back with her fourth essay collection, Quietly Hostile. Like her previous essays, Irby uses humor to discuss the difficult things in her life. Chronic illness, the end of a dream, the pandemic — Irby approaches each one with a fresh quip or spot of dark humor. In one essay, Irby and her wife adopt a terrible dog that they definitely didn’t mean to keep. In another essay, Irby describes a major allergic reaction she has when she tries out one of her wife’s supplements. And if you love audiobooks, this is definitely one you need to check out on audio. Irby is a phenomenal narrator, using her sense of perfect comedic timing to create a laugh-out-loud performance that will have you being far too loud in quiet spaces.

I read A Fever in the Heartland for a book club with some friends, and we all couldn’t stop talking about it. We all agreed that when we think of the KKK, we typically think of the South. But Timothy Egan is here to remind folks that the KKK took a national approach, finding strongholds across the country. Egan focuses on Indiana, which had local clubs of the KKK in all but two of its counties. He describes the history of the organization in the region, how the KKK had many different goals of ridding the region of various groups that they felt weren’t “desirable.” This book clearly outlines that the KKK had control over a lot of local politics, which gave them great success in their heinous work to destroy any community they thought was not supporting their efforts in white supremacy.

Imani Perry’s family is originally from Alabama, but she moved North for her education and her academic career. In South to America, Perry returns to her home region with fresh eyes, seeing the South in all of its complexities. Each chapter looks at a different sub-region of the South, highlighting important events and histories. The whole reading experience feels like Perry is a docent giving readers a tour of the South, pointing out interesting places and things along the way. Perry argues that the South is the heart of America, that the South is the truest measure of where America is as a nation. She shares many incredible insights with readers, and her work is so well researched and laid out. She also reads the audiobook, so if you love listening to your books, this is definitely one to read with your ears.