“To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings.”

An eye-opening, necessary read for both women and men. I’d become aware of the very demonizing lens I had on men for a while and wanted to untangle that web as I strengthened relationships with my partner, dad, and brother. It shows how deeply the patriarchy affects men’s emotional well-being (regardless of their race, background, or sexuality)— in turn hurting us all. Yet without, as hooks says, ‘erasing or lessening male responsibility for supporting and perpetuating their power under patriarchy to exploit and oppress women in a manner far more grievous.’

“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

A friend had raved to me about how this book helped her through grieving an unexpected loss. So when a month later I got the call that my seemingly perfectly healthy abuelita received a terminal cancer diagnosis, with days to weeks left, I bought this and carried it back home to Georgia with me. I’d read this every night in bed after a day spent taking care of her. It was a hug, a road-map, a helping hand to understanding grief, but also a wonderful escape into Joan’s life and love. I am so grateful to have had her words during that time, they will stick with me for the rest of my lifetime.

“The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility.”

Written by psychotherapist Esther Perel, she explores the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire— drawing on a lot of scenarios and insights from her work of 20+ years as a couples therapist. It was a really interesting read for me as someone who traded out the novelty of midnight uber rides to strangers’ houses for a monogamous relationship, spanning the evolution of my relationship and watching friends open their own relationships, which posed a lot of questions in my mind about monogamy in a modern world. A great read that deconstructed a lot of views I had on sex and relationships.

“When you were young and experienced traumas or attachment injuries, you didn’t have enough body or mind to protect yourself. Your Self couldn’t protect your parts, so your parts lost trust in your Self as the inner leader. They may even have pushed your Self out of your body and took the hit themselves—they believed they had to take over and protect you and your other parts. ”

The one book I recommend everyone reads, and I will never shut up about it. My therapist asked me to read this about a month or two into our sessions after feeling really frustrated with myself and those in my life who contributed to my traumas and triggers. This book has completely transformed me, my view of self and my view of others— especially those closest to me. My therapist and I primarily use this approach to understand why my anxieties exist and how to regain control over some while releasing others completely. There are guided practices to do on your own too. I owe so much of me regaining control of my life to this book (and Christa my therapist too ofc).

“We're so often told that art can't really change anything. But I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes; it opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living.”

Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, examining their role in our political and emotional lives. I think she must be clairvoyant because this book was released a month after lockdown— as if it was devine timing. She profiles a range of artists and their impact in her essays, giving you a little art history lesson and also making a strong case for why art will always matter, even when our world is in total chaos.

“I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.”

I was gifted this book on my 25th birthday from a friend, with a note inside saying how I reminded her of Anaïs and that her innate fiery passion would be something I would resonate with. At the time, I didn’t know that would probably be one of the best compliments I ever get— and she was right, I loved it. An uncensored documentation from a year in Anaïs Nin’s life, when she falls in love with writer Henry Miller and his wife June. Igniting a range of emotions, sexual liberation, and moral questioning, this read feels like crawling into her brain and feeling the complexity of all her emotions. I loved every second of it.

This book was by far the most recommended!

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism.

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.

Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"

“I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,” writes Limón. “I am the hurting kind.” What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world’s pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings—and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they “do not / care to be seen as symbols”?

A collection of author Brianna Wiest's most beloved pieces of writing. Her meditations include why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life.

We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture.

Richard Siken’s Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession and love. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking.