Category: True Story

Michelle Obama is back with The Light We Carry, a collection of essays that each expand on her ideas around standing her ground, going high when they go low. She also shares about her family’s experience weathering the pandemic. Her essays are kind, supportive, and encouraging, while firmly making her points. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook, which Obama reads herself. Listening to the audiobook feels like you’re sitting down with her for a cup of coffee while she shares encouraging anecdotes from her own life. So if you’ve had a rough year (haven’t we all), then this is a perfect holiday gift for yourself.

Hands down, Hannah Gadsby’s Ten Steps to Nanette is my favorite memoir of the year. In her memoir, Gadsby shares what it was like to grow up as a queer, autistic kid in Tasmania, Australia. Gadsby is well-known for her comedy special Nanette, which you can still watch on Netflix. Her memoir expands on the ideas in Nanette and gives us a closer look into how Gadbsy’s life led to her creating this incredible one-woman show. The audiobook is out of this world. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking all in one book.

My favorite cookbooks are those that have at least some little snippet of storytelling in them. I want to know more about where the recipe came from. Where did the cookbook author first discover their love of food? In Bibi’s Kitchen does that and more. Somali chef Hawa Hassan talks to bibis (grandmother’s) from South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Comoros, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, and Eritrea. They share their recipes and wisdom around their love of food. This cookbook feels like travel writing, memoir, and a cookbook all rolled into one!

Julia Turshen is a beloved chef and food writer — she even worked with Hawa Hassan on In Bibi’s Kitchen! In Simply Julia, Turshen shares the recipes that she makes at home with her wife. Turshen’s wife had to go on a medical diet several years ago, and that inspired Turshen to take a different look at the way she made comfort food. In addition to these amazing recipes, she writes short essays that give us a little insight into her life and how she approaches the food that she makes.

Journalist Tanya Talaga investigates the deaths of seven Indigenous high school students  in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Each one of these students moved from rural locations in the northern part of the province to attend school. Talaga pieces together the students’ lives, trying to better understand why each student died. Woven throughout is the dark history of the residential school system across Canada and its lasting effects on Indigenous communities across the country.

Eisenberg volunteered to work for a nonprofit in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. She ended up living there for years, falling in love with the region and its people. But while there, she learned of two middle-class, white women who were murdered as they were traveling through the area. The Third Rainbow Girl combines Eisenberg’s own story of working in West Virginia, the case of the two “Rainbow Girls,” and the history of Pocahontas County. Even with its many moving parts, Eisenberg deftly weaves a story together to create something wholly unique.

If you have a reader in your life who loves self-help, memoirs, or essays, then this is the book you need. Over 10 years ago, Cheryl Strayed started writing “Dear Sugar,” an advice column on The Rumpus. Now she has a new 10th anniversary edition that includes extra columns that she’s written on her new Substack. Tiny Beautiful Things is the perfect gift that allows readers to dip in and out of the different columns between holiday celebrations, travel, or as a wind down before bed. Plus, Cheryl Strayed reads the audiobook edition, which gives listeners an intimate performance of her columns.

For the history and sociology lovers in your life, Imani Perry’s National Book Award-winning South to America is the perfect gift. Perry explores the history of Black Americans living in the South. She travels around the country, describing the history of places like Appalachia, Atlanta, and Charleston. She also returns to her Alabama roots, sharing portions of her own family history in the South. Perry challenges readers to rethink their assumptions of the South, whether they are from the region or not. She deftly navigates through complex issues around the region. This will be one that I read and reread; there’s always some new things to learn with each new read through.

Saidiya Hartman writes incredibly beautiful prose. She describes the lives of young, urban Black women as they go about their lives. Hartman wanted to tell the story of the Black women she read about that were mentioned in passing or that appeared unnamed in photographs. She investigates their lives, researches their pasts, and invites readers to bear witness to these women who are all too often lost from history. This book is incredibly captivating and intricately crafted. I found myself mesmerized while wandering through the past.

I’ve read a lot of Leslie Jamison’s essays, and her sentences are incredibly well crafted, and her narrative voice draws me in like few others. So when I saw she had a full-length memoir/contemplation of the nature of alcoholism and art, I knew I had to read it. In The Recovering, she describes her experience with alcoholism and her slow acceptance that she needed to get sober and that she couldn’t do it on her own. She examines so many moving parts, I wondered how she would stick the landing. But she does. And so much of her writing has stayed with me.

The Way Through the Woods is a beautiful example of the grief memoir. Long moved to Norway from Malaysia, and she and her Norwegian husband spent many happy years together, creating a beautiful life. But when her husband died, Long didn’t know how she was going to live without him. Somehow she falls into mushroom foraging, discovering a whole new way to enjoy her home by exploring its forests. And in Norway, they take their foraging very seriously. So Long begins to study for the exam that will solidify her as an official mushroom forager. It’s such a beautiful book about mourning and nature writing.

If you’re looking for a nonfiction book to give someone for the holidays, this is a beautiful option. Nezhukumatathil chooses one creature, plant, or weather element to write about for each chapter. And many chapters come with beautiful illustrations by Fumi Nakamura. I loved the essays in the collection where Nezhukumatathil writes about how she was taught her love of nature by her parents, which she then passed on to her kids. The stories from her life really give you an insight into who Nezhukumatathil is as a nature lover and writer. The essays feel so comforting in a lot of ways, making it the perfect nature book to cozy up with after a long day of holiday celebrations.

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.

Elaine Castillo thinks of “reading” in a lot of different ways. There’s reading books, of course, but there’s also reading people, reading film, or reading art. One can also be read by society. These are just a few of the different kinds of reading that Castillo discusses in her essays. She gives examples of her own reading, analyzing essays, novels, films, and art exhibits. She leads her discussion by example. Her essays are a perfect way to contemplate different ways of viewing literature and other mediums.

Daniel Heath Justice, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English Language, writes about Indigenous Literatures. His book introduces readers to the unique qualities that Indigenous Literatures often have in common. When we’re taught to study literature in a more formal setting, professors often approach texts from a Western, colonialist perspective. Justice challenges that approach, asking readers to decolonize their reading of Indigenous Literatures. His writing is personable, up front, and incredibly insightful. And in his discussion, Justice recommends dozens of texts that readers might enjoy. I added so many titles to my TBR after reading Why Indigenous Literatures Matter.

Although more than 1 million Black men and women served the United States during World War II, they were ostracized and separated during their service — then kept out of many of the benefits available through the GI Bill. This book seeks to uncover stories of Black veterans and those who supported them, covering citizens like Thurgood Marshall, Ella Baker, and more. This feels like a particularly important and relevant piece of history to pick up right now.

Women have not typically been allowed to participate in combat missions in the same way, except for some special circumstances like those shared in this book. In 2010, the Army created Cultural Support Teams, an effort to place women alongside Special Operations soldiers in Afghanistan to help connect and build relationships with Afghan women. This book is the story of the first class of CSTs and how they worked to prove “that women are physically and mentally tough enough” to participate in Special Operations teams. The center of this story is Ashley White, a CST who was beloved and effective in her service.

In both her prose and her audiobook performance, Jia Tolentino has an excellent narrative voice. In every essay, I feel like I’m sitting with her in a café listening to her talk to me about her time on a reality show or about how expensive yoga pants represent some key issues with capitalism. While I may not have been interested in these topics if I had heard about them any other way, Tolentino’s writing makes me fascinated in whatever she wants to write about. Her vivid writing makes me committed to learning more about her ideas. I will pick up whatever Tolentino decides to write next.

Admittedly, I haven’t read a lot of Ann Patchett’s work, but I decided to try out her nonfiction and started listening to her perform her essay collection These Precious Days. Reader, I have to tell you that I was smitten. Her warm American accent blends well with the scenes she describes. I’m meeting her three fathers, I’m greeting her dog at her bookstore in Nashville, or I’m bunkered down with her during the pandemic. Her essays are so intimate that I feel like I am her new best friend. All of this is, of course, just in my head, but I think that speaks to how inviting her writing feels to readers (and listeners). I ended up checking two more of her nonfiction audiobooks out from Hoopla, both of which she also performs. I guess I know how I will be spending all of this time packing and unpacking for the move!