December Rec Roundtable: Nonfiction
Dec. 11th, 2018 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ladybusinessIt's December: the end of the year and the time of 1000 recommendation lists. We thought we'd get in on the action with some sweet themed recs! Here are some of our favorite nonfiction titles!
Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny gets quite dense and technical in places, but it still astonished me. I marked quotes on half the pages in the book, and I screamed “yes, yes, oh my God, exactly!” so much while I was reading it that I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t bang on the walls. A close second place goes to Tara Westover’s bananas memoir of escaping a scary-religious childhood, Educated.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Gosh, this was just so beautifully written. The memoir/essay collection by a Potawatomi ecologist touched me in so many ways. I reminded me of the beauty and wonder of the natural world and made me think about different ways of knowing the world -- both science and traditional knowledges. It also made me think about storytelling. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” Le Guin claims that its hard to tell a story about gather wild oats -- yet Kimmerer succeeds at describing gathering plants compellingly.
Most of the non-fiction that I read is graphic biographies because apparently that's where I live! With that in mind: Nagata Kabi's My Solo Exchange Diary is brutal and I adored it. It's a series of autobiographical essays from the creator of My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness about her depression, her relationship with her family, her attempts at independence and relationships, and her newfound fame. It's – somewhat harrowing to read, because she's frank about her depression almost to the point of cruelty to herself, but the art is good and evocative, and it's as relatable as much as it hurts. It's definitely worth picking up.
Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon tells the fascinating life stories of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley. Tragically, Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth to Shelley, her second daughter, and the two never really knew each other. However, Gordon contends that there are many parallels between their lives, and that Wollstonecraft was a huge influence on her daughter. She demonstrates this by spooling out the lives of the two women in alternating chapters; flipping between the lives of Wollstonecraft and Shelley from their early years until their deaths. This creates a work which demonstrates the importance of literary 'foremothers', and academic female influence, on women's work, while also highlighting the highly personal influence that a mother can have on her child.
This book taught me so much about the two women, but especially Wollstonecraft. Before I read this book, I thought she was the author of one significant work and the mother of a famous daughter. Turns out, Wollstonecraft's life and work was much wider than I'd ever known, and I loved learning so much about her. The book also gave me one of my favourite burns on Percy Shelley when it points out that despite nearly drowning several times before he actually drowned he never learnt to swim and insisted on sailing alone. I can't help but warm to a book whose approach to Mary Shelley's partner is very much 'OMG, Percy, why are you like this?'
The best nonfiction book I've read in awhile is Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister. A study of the power of women's anger, with a focus on the reaction to the 2016 United States presidential election, but it provides a lot of historical context as well, going back to the anti-slavery and women's suffrage movements. I've been following Traister's work as a feminist journalist at least since she covered the 2008 presidential election for Salon, and her book about that election (Big Girls Don't Cry) was brilliant, so when she first announced she was writing a book about anger and the 2016 election, I knew I had to read it. And I'm really glad I did.
Theme for December 11: Favorite Nonfiction
Jenny
Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny gets quite dense and technical in places, but it still astonished me. I marked quotes on half the pages in the book, and I screamed “yes, yes, oh my God, exactly!” so much while I was reading it that I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t bang on the walls. A close second place goes to Tara Westover’s bananas memoir of escaping a scary-religious childhood, Educated.
Forestofglory
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Gosh, this was just so beautifully written. The memoir/essay collection by a Potawatomi ecologist touched me in so many ways. I reminded me of the beauty and wonder of the natural world and made me think about different ways of knowing the world -- both science and traditional knowledges. It also made me think about storytelling. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” Le Guin claims that its hard to tell a story about gather wild oats -- yet Kimmerer succeeds at describing gathering plants compellingly.
Susan
Most of the non-fiction that I read is graphic biographies because apparently that's where I live! With that in mind: Nagata Kabi's My Solo Exchange Diary is brutal and I adored it. It's a series of autobiographical essays from the creator of My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness about her depression, her relationship with her family, her attempts at independence and relationships, and her newfound fame. It's – somewhat harrowing to read, because she's frank about her depression almost to the point of cruelty to herself, but the art is good and evocative, and it's as relatable as much as it hurts. It's definitely worth picking up.
Jodie
Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon tells the fascinating life stories of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley. Tragically, Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth to Shelley, her second daughter, and the two never really knew each other. However, Gordon contends that there are many parallels between their lives, and that Wollstonecraft was a huge influence on her daughter. She demonstrates this by spooling out the lives of the two women in alternating chapters; flipping between the lives of Wollstonecraft and Shelley from their early years until their deaths. This creates a work which demonstrates the importance of literary 'foremothers', and academic female influence, on women's work, while also highlighting the highly personal influence that a mother can have on her child.
This book taught me so much about the two women, but especially Wollstonecraft. Before I read this book, I thought she was the author of one significant work and the mother of a famous daughter. Turns out, Wollstonecraft's life and work was much wider than I'd ever known, and I loved learning so much about her. The book also gave me one of my favourite burns on Percy Shelley when it points out that despite nearly drowning several times before he actually drowned he never learnt to swim and insisted on sailing alone. I can't help but warm to a book whose approach to Mary Shelley's partner is very much 'OMG, Percy, why are you like this?'
KJ
The best nonfiction book I've read in awhile is Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister. A study of the power of women's anger, with a focus on the reaction to the 2016 United States presidential election, but it provides a lot of historical context as well, going back to the anti-slavery and women's suffrage movements. I've been following Traister's work as a feminist journalist at least since she covered the 2008 presidential election for Salon, and her book about that election (Big Girls Don't Cry) was brilliant, so when she first announced she was writing a book about anger and the 2016 election, I knew I had to read it. And I'm really glad I did.
