Category: True Story

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s The Disordered Cosmos took the world by storm when it was released in 2021. This book also received a delightfully ridiculous number of accolades, including being the winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science & Technology, winner of the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science, winner of the 2022 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and a finalist position for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein dives into ideas around physics from her perspective as a Black woman scientist. She discusses how science, like other fields, contains an intense amount of sexism, racism, and other kinds of oppression. I really appreciate her viewpoint, and she deftly explains a scientific field that I have zero background in. There’s something about Dr. Prescod-Weinstein’s enthusiasm for the topic that is infectious.

I’m always looking to learn more about prominent women in history, especially key figures in traditionally male dominated fields. So I love Rachel Ignotofsky’s books about women from history. The first one is about women in science. Each woman is featured on a beautiful two-page spread filled with her biography, fun facts, and incredible illustrations. And if you love this one, there’s also Women in Sports and Women in Art. Yes, I do indeed own them all and would recommend them to anyone and everyone.

There’s a reason this book is much beloved. The way Kimmerer writes about the natural world just sweeps you off your feet. You are there in the water with her trying to save her pond from being reclaimed by the land, or you are right beside her as she leads dozens of students out into nature on a guided hike. Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, also discusses her Native Nation’s culture around plants, and the traditional practices she was taught by her elders that help care for the land. She investigates these traditions, and discusses how these practices work from a scientist’s perspective. Each chapter includes a different aspect of nature that she examines. I found myself endlessly fascinated by her essays.

Like Kimmerer, Hope Jahren is a botanist, and in her memoir, she shares how she found herself in the world of plants, working to make a place for herself in a male-dominated field. She and her lab assistant have a beautiful friendship. They travel the world, collecting samples, and stay in each other’s lives for decades. This memoir won the National Books Critics Circle Award for nonfiction when it was released. And for good reason! The prose is incredible, and even though I know very little about botany, I could still follow along and understand what was going on.

Raechel Anne Jolie grew up as a working class kid in the outskirts of Cleveland. When she was just a girl, her father was hit by a drunk driver, which ended their way of life forever. From there, her childhood was spent moving from home to home, never seeming to stay for long. She finds the alt scene downtown, and begins to discover a whole new world that she feels irrevocably drawn to. This tiny memoir is a shining testament to a love of working-class people, the midwest, and queer culture.

Brian Broome couldn’t wait to leave northeast Ohio. He spent his childhood as a queer, Black kid never fitting in. But no matter where he moved, he still faced racism and homophobia. He describes how he coped with sex and drugs, always trying to forget the trauma he’d experienced while searching for belonging. Broome’s prose is incredible, every word there for a reason. His memoir is full of heart and a deep sense of longing.

It’s been over 30 years since the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark for disability rights. But what has actually changed since 1990? Ben Mattlin reports on the world of disability advocacy and activism, chronicling the post-ADA world through his perspective as a disabled man and as a journalist interviewing hundreds of disabled people about their lives. I really appreciated how Mattlin featured a diverse group of perspectives, covering everything from disabled models to the paralympics. Each chapter focuses on a different topic, making the book easy to follow.

It’s been several years since I first read Heart Berries, and I reread it a couple years ago. So much of this memoir stays with me, and I keep thinking about how incredible it is in its craft and storytelling. Mailhot is from the Seabird Island Band, and the memoir starts with Mailhot in a mental health facility, trying to work through traumatic parts of her past. She takes us back through her memories, weaving in and out, touching moments in her history that she’d rather forget. This memoir is a stunning example of the genre.

Joshua McFadden’s Six Seasons won the James Beard Award. While Six Seasons focused on vegetables, Grains for Every Season is a new take on how we incorporate grains into the food we prepare. The cookbook is beautifully illustrated, and gives a great background into different grains and how to best incorporate them into our everyday recipes.

I’ve had my eye on this cookbook for years, so you can imagine how excited I was to see it under my tree. Bottom of the Pot is the winner of the IACP 2019 First Book Award presented by The Julia Child Foundation. It combines essays and recipes to create that unique pairing of cooking from a very personal place. Deravian gives us a diverse collection of Persian recipes, adding sections about how to treat individual ingredients so we get the best results.

Roz Chast grew up in New York City, her parents living in the same apartment for decades. As her parents age, she begins to think through how she will care for them when they get older and how she wants to spend as much time with them as possible. But her parents want to have nothing to do with any of these conversations. In her classic sense of humor, Chast captures the ridiculous moments in a very difficult time in her life. This graphic memoir is so good, no wonder it was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Leila Abdelrazaq’s grandfather was one of the thousands of Palistinians who fled Palestine after the creation of Israel and the war of 1948. He and his family spent the next several decades moving from one country to another, facing constant discrimination as they tried to make a life for themselves. At first, they thought that their exile was temporary, but as the years passed, they began to lose hope that they would ever see Palestine again.

In Good Talk, Mira Jacob describes how her son asked her why his Jewish paternal grandparents would vote for Trump, a man who hated immigrants, like Mira and her parents. This question launches her into even more questions that she’s not quite sure how to answer. She works through these conversations in Good Talk, illustrating them on the page and giving readers a fuller picture. I read this graphic memoir while waiting for a delayed flight at the airport. I felt consumed, and barely even noticed spending the extra four hours surrounded by disgruntled passengers.

Dr. William H. Turner introduces readers to the history of Black Appalachian coal towns, places that many outside the region may not have even realized existed. He describes daily life and the economic boom they experienced after WWII. They were also cultural centers with their own magazines and organizations. And of course, he also follows the region’s decline, which deeply affected these towns and was eventually their downfall. Turner strives to ensure that these places, the places he loves, are not forgotten.

Over the course of half a century, over 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized across five different institutions in Virginia. This program was not a misguided program from well-meaning people. It was in support of white supremacy, and meant to control women, remove poor people from their land, and eliminate disabled people. The program ended in 1979, but its impact on communities around the state still haunts hundreds and hundreds of people. Catte doesn’t shy away from these harsh realities of America’s love of eugenics in its many forms. And, like the historian she is, she wants to remind Americans of our history so it won’t happen again.

You all already know I adore this book. But the more I think about Black Folk Could Fly, the more I wish more people would read it. Kenan passed away in 2020, and his publisher, Norton, published this collection of some of his best essays from throughout his career. While Kenan was better known for his fiction work, his nonfiction writing shows the same eye for detail and beautiful prose style as his fiction. In Book Riot’s Best of 2022 list, I say, “He’s contemplative, always mulling over other writers’ work and circling back to interrogate his own ideas on what it means for him to be a Black, gay man in America. This collection is a must-read for any nonfiction lover.”

The book that was a close runner-up for my pick for the Best of 2022 list is Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia. Avashia grew up as a queer Indian American girl in West Virginia, and this essay collection invites readers into her life through snapshots. Avashia writes her story with a deep amount of love, sharing about how much she appreciates where she grew up, but also describing how she’s still been hurt by the people who helped raise her. Avashia expresses a tension that so many Appalachians feel in today’s world.

Tracy K. Smith wrote the introduction to this vital collection of essays Lorde called The Cancer Journals. Lorde was diagnosed with breast cancer and began to assess a world that treated her like a warrior for fighting the disease, but also insisted she wear a prosthetic to make sure she appeared as a woman “should look.” But Lorde pushed back. She didn’t need to erase any physical indication of her disease. She didn’t need breasts to be a woman. Lorde’s assessment of norms in the medical industry is spot on. She possesses an ability to clearly see through the ableist expectations of society, and her intersectional approach encourages others to rethink their own perspectives of illness and what that means to women, especially Black women, patients.

National Book Award finalist Meghan O’Rourke writes about her experience with chronic illness and how the medical industrial complex is not designed to care for chronically ill people or make our lives better. O’Rourke began getting sick, and tried to brush it off as nothing. Her initial visits to doctors yielded nothing helpful, and she spent years of her life trying to manage an ever-growing list of horrible symptoms. As O’Rourke shares her own story, she researches the state of the healthcare system and describes how it fails chronically ill patients, especially chronically ill women.

First up, Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper discusses the role of Black women’s anger in American culture. She also gives examples of what role her anger played in her own life and in the lives Black women icons of popular culture. Her writing is full of the wisdom given to her by older Black women, and what she wants to share with the next generation. She also reads the audiobook edition, creating an incredible listening experience as she narrates her writing in such a personal way that invites listeners to just sit down and have a seat as she drops some wisdom on us.

In her take on women’s anger, Chemaly looks at different aspects of women’s rage and how it has been treated through history. Each chapter looks at a different topic around women’s anger — how it affects women’s health, how angry women have been treated throughout history, etc. Her writing is so clear and well-researched; there’s something new to learn in every chapter.