I am an LA-based author, sociologist, and cultural and political theorist who writes from beyond the surface. A seer since childhood, I have always challenged the official story (even when it got me in trouble), guided by my intuition and a refusal to accept injustice as inevitable. My writing is fueled by a deep curiosity to unravel society’s darkest puzzles—systems of control, violence, collective amnesia—and to imagine what could exist beyond them. Through storytelling, I invite readers to question what they’ve been taught and to see the world not only as it appears, but as it truly is, and reimagine what it could be.
I wrote...
Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons
This book came to me when I had survived so much up until that point and really began to realize the need to liberate myself and release social conditioning. I was like, “Goodness, this is the book I need to hold up anytime someone shames me using tropes about a ‘woman’s place’ in the world.”
I enjoyed how it invites you to question why powerful figures in traditional religious institutions have been rendered as men. She pushes us to go farther back in history, before Abrahamic religions, to trace the spread of disinformation about women as leaders, goddesses, and powerful beings.
I love this book because it is useful at any step of your journey to reclaiming personal power.
The landmark exploration of the ancient worship of the Great Goddess and the eventual supression of women's rites.
In the beginning, God was a woman...
How did the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy come about? In fascinating detail, Merlin Stone tells us the story of the Goddess who reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. Under her reign, societal roles differed markedly from those in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures: women bought and sold property, traded in the marketplace, and inherited title and land from their mothers. Documenting the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmas, Merlin Stone describes an ancient…
I love that this book humanizes the serious costs of progress that are intentionally obscured by scientists, particularly when their test subjects are from vulnerable populations. This book shows us how one Black woman changed history after her cells were taken from her without her consent, a cover-up that ensued for years as scientists and entrepreneurs used her cells to develop everything from the polio vaccine to gene mapping, now making billions of dollars from her cells.
The U.S. scientific community has experimented on Black people, Indigenous people, women, LGBTQI people, and incarcerated people for centuries since this nation’s inception. I appreciate how this book brings that truth to light and shows our modern society would not exist without the degradation of our most oppressed communities.
With an introduction by author of The Tidal Zone, Sarah Moss
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .
Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world for ever. Balancing the beauty and drama…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Urgency is a lie. We all need a reminder to sit down and do nothing and this book is the one to remind you. One of the main points is that our attention is sacred, and we live in a fast world vying for it. Refusing to participate is one of the highest acts of liberation, especially when practiced in community with others who to believe in the art of “doing nothing.”
I love the permission this book gives. Often, we need permission to sit down because nothing is as urgent as we are told it is.
This book is great for those who constantly fill their calendars. Something beautiful happens when we refuse and sit with our own thoughts: we come to know our own minds.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time • The New Yorker • NPR • GQ • Elle • Vulture • Fortune • Boing Boing • The Irish Times • The New York Public Library • The Brooklyn Public Library
"A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."—Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review
One of President Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of 2019" Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year
I am a creative person, and I value my ability to share with the world what inspires me. I love how this book argues for the inherent creativity within everyone, even for people who don’t see themselves as writers, artists, or creatives.
Because I agree with this point, and it is something I teach when speaking to people in community groups or my students in the classroom. I believe we all have special gifts, and with peace and quiet, it is easier to hear our own authentic voice and the message we have to share with the world.
From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.
"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment.” —Anne Lamott
“I set out to write a book about what to do to make a…
Gifts from a Challenging Childhood
by
Jan Bergstrom,
Learn to understand and work with your childhood wounds. Do you feel like old wounds or trauma from your childhood keep showing up today? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with what to do about it and where to start? If so, this book will help you travel down a path…
When governments set books on fire, either through banning them or literally dumping them into burning piles, the world has reached a dark place. I like that this book is timeless. It doesn’t just show the cost of censorship and mass control of the populace by preventing knowledge transmission–I really respect how it shows that this is a tried-and-true method of control that has been used since the beginning of human civilization, not just in modern times.
What people term “dystopian” are simply books that make you look at society’s shadow, but in a way that is digestible. I think it’s important that this book shows us how fiction is often closer to the truth.
Curiosity is the first step in dispelling fear, and this book takes you there.
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.
Over 1 million copies sold in the UK.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.
For anyone ready to see clearly, speak truth, and build a future beyond control, you must free yourself first from the lie of obedience. My book shows how control surrounds us: to silence, oppress, and confuse. I use prisons to make these broader points, showing that the first prison many people face is the one inside their own minds.
Learn how our society was built to control through the powerful stories of Black political prisoners who have survived years of routine corruption, law enforcement aligning with white supremacist groups, and torture. Rather than turn away, if we look deep into the core of our penal system with open eyes, we can see that everything we have been taught about justice and crime is rooted in myth.
