Here are 100 books that Abolish the Family fans have personally recommended if you like
Abolish the Family.
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As a journalist, lawyer, and writer, I've been thinking and writing about state regulation of sexuality for 20 years. Political writing about sex can easily fall into orthodoxy; whether conservative or liberal, each side has its expected talking points. When I began investigating ways of thinking about public displays of sexuality in Park Cruising, I returned to the cache of sex-positive writing of the 1980s and 1990s. Some of it was invigorating, and some stale. So I sought out new writing about sex and sexuality, and I was richly rewarded. These books are just the tip of the iceberg; there's a feast of contemporary writing and thinking. So much to think through and explore!
I spent a lot of the last year pressing The Right to Sex into the hands of my smartest friends.
This book tackles some of the thorniest issues in sexual politics today, teasing out the seeming contradictions in feminist thought on campus sexual assault investigations, the Me Too movement, incels, and more. It’s compulsively readable; I was hooked from the first essay.
“Laser-cut writing and a stunning intellect. If only every writer made this much beautiful sense.” —Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women
“Amia Srinivasan is an unparalleled and extraordinary writer—no one X-rays an argument, a desire, a contradiction, a defense mechanism quite like her. In stripping the new politics of sex and power down to its fundamental and sometimes clashing principles, The Right to Sex is a bracing revivification of a crucial lineage in feminist writing: Srinivasan is daring, compassionate, and in relentless search of a new frame.” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As a journalist, lawyer, and writer, I've been thinking and writing about state regulation of sexuality for 20 years. Political writing about sex can easily fall into orthodoxy; whether conservative or liberal, each side has its expected talking points. When I began investigating ways of thinking about public displays of sexuality in Park Cruising, I returned to the cache of sex-positive writing of the 1980s and 1990s. Some of it was invigorating, and some stale. So I sought out new writing about sex and sexuality, and I was richly rewarded. These books are just the tip of the iceberg; there's a feast of contemporary writing and thinking. So much to think through and explore!
adrienne maree brown taught me a lot about the lineage of sex-positive writing from the 1970s to today.
The book offered me a useful corrective to views of sexual politics which so often ignore and silence liberatory writing by Black women. This book reminded me that you cannot tell the story of sex-positive feminism without Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, or Fran White. But brown isn’t here to scold you – this book is a joyful read.
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. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan…
As a journalist, lawyer, and writer, I've been thinking and writing about state regulation of sexuality for 20 years. Political writing about sex can easily fall into orthodoxy; whether conservative or liberal, each side has its expected talking points. When I began investigating ways of thinking about public displays of sexuality in Park Cruising, I returned to the cache of sex-positive writing of the 1980s and 1990s. Some of it was invigorating, and some stale. So I sought out new writing about sex and sexuality, and I was richly rewarded. These books are just the tip of the iceberg; there's a feast of contemporary writing and thinking. So much to think through and explore!
For me, this book begins with a pleasing reversal: that the tough-looking guys engaged in casual, rough, or extreme types of sexual expression are in fact displaying tenderness.
The book made me reexamine what I thought I knew about the emotions and relationships at work in gay “pig” subcultures. I found myself underlining passage after passage. In the last third of the book, Florêncio becomes a character in the scene he is describing, a risky move that pays off.
This book analyses contemporary gay "pig" masculinities, which have emerged alongside antiretroviral therapies, online porn, and new sexualised patterns of recreational drug use, examining how they trouble modern European understandings of the male body, their ethics, and their political underpinnings.
This is the first book to reflect on an increasingly visible new form of sexualised gay masculinity, and the first monograph to move debates on condomless sex amongst gay men beyond discourses of HIV and/or AIDS. It contributes to existing critical histories of sexuality, pornography and other sex media at a crucial juncture in the history of gay male sex…
As a journalist, lawyer, and writer, I've been thinking and writing about state regulation of sexuality for 20 years. Political writing about sex can easily fall into orthodoxy; whether conservative or liberal, each side has its expected talking points. When I began investigating ways of thinking about public displays of sexuality in Park Cruising, I returned to the cache of sex-positive writing of the 1980s and 1990s. Some of it was invigorating, and some stale. So I sought out new writing about sex and sexuality, and I was richly rewarded. These books are just the tip of the iceberg; there's a feast of contemporary writing and thinking. So much to think through and explore!
I was mesmerized by this book, and I read it in one great big gulp.
It tackles one of the most intractable questions that queer and trans people face: what to make of historical figures who lived their lives before they had the tidy identitarian categories we have now? I appreciate that Heyam is able to live with some of the inherent ambiguities of their project, and to some extent leaves the question open to further discussion and debate.
After I finished the book, the stories Heyam tells continued to rumble around in my head.
Agroundbreakingglobal history of gender nonconformity
Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.
Before We Were Transilluminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present,whose experiencesof gender havedefiedbinary categories. Blendinghistorical analysiswith sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusivetrans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We…
I am a nerdy economist who studies women and work. I am passionate about using data to understand the real lived experiences of women in today’s economy. Taylor Swift is my muse because she is not only authentic but persistent, a true “reinventionista” in her heart-of-hearts as she moves from era-to-era masterminding her path to long-term happiness and success. I want to live in a world where women’s lives are appreciated, understood, and supported. It’s why I do what I do and, in many respects, I also believe it is why Taylor Swift does what she does.
While Taylor Swift has not written a song about Isabel Allende or her daughter Paula, it may only be a matter of time.
Taylor is known for having a strong, tight-knit relationship with her mother, Andrea. If anyone can write about the tethers and ties that weave through a mother-daughter relationship with such precise detail and sorrowing pain, it is Isabel Allende.
Paula is a memoir about loss and the story about how Isabel lost her adult daughter to cancer. It is the only book to ever make me sob-cry. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. I felt Isabel’s pain deep in the depths of my soul in a similar light as when I listen to the song “Soon You’ll Get Better” on her Lover album, which Taylor Swift wrote about her mother’s treatment for cancer.
"Beautiful and heartrending. . . . Memoir, autobiography, epicedium, perhaps even some fiction: they are all here, and they are all quite wonderful."-Los Angeles Times
In this literary classic, New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende recalls the story of her beloved daughter and her remarkable family's past.
When her daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and fell into a coma, Isabel Allende began to write the story of her family for her unconscious child. Bizarre ancestors are introduced; delightful and bitter childhood memories are shared; amazing anecdotes of youthful years are relived, and the most intimate secrets are quietly passed…
I’m an award-winning biographer and critic. My essays and reviews appear regularly in the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement, and I teach literature and creative writing at King’s College London. I’ve always loved stories about the lives of great writers – stories that seek to illuminate genius, without ever explaining it away.
This is a magnificent autobiography, a work of intricate self-portraiture that takes in everything from the author’s dental troubles, through his relationship with his father, to his reaction to his cousin’s murder. Amis’s comic energy and stylistic brio are on sizzling display throughout, but so are qualities that aren’t often associated with his fiction: gentleness, generosity, emotional vulnerability…
In this remarkable work of autobiography, the son of the great comic novelist Kingsley Amis explores his relationship with his father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley's life, including the final one of his death. Amis also reflects on the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who disappeared without trace in 1973 and was exhumed twenty years later from the basement of Frederick West, one of Britain's most prolific serial murderers.
**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
When my son and son-in-law were getting married back in 2010, my cousin’s four-year-old daughter Emma was excited to be their flower girl. I wanted to buy Emma a book about a flower girl to prepare her for the wedding, but I couldn’t find anything that worked for our situation, since we were having two grooms and no bride—at an otherwise traditional Jewish wedding. Then one day, my cousin called, laughing, and said “Emma said she’s afraid to come to the wedding because of the Ring BEAR!” So I needed to write this for Emma—a story where everything isn’t what the child imagines, but it’s all joyful.
I love this beautiful new two-mommies book which features a little girl who misses a parent who is away on a work trip. That the parent happens to be one of her two moms is not at all the point, which is part of what makes this book so sweet and so relatable to any child who has ever achingly missed someone close.
A little girl stays home with Mama when Mummy goes off on a work trip in this tender, inviting story that will resonate with every child who has missed a parent. For one little girl, there's no place she'd rather be than sitting between Mama and Mummy. So when Mummy goes away on a work trip, it's tricky to find a good place at the table. As the days go by, Mama brings her to the library, they watch films, and all of them talk on the phone, but she still misses Mummy as deep as the ocean and as…
I’m a UK bestselling writer of historical fiction who has often used Cornwall as a setting. I wrote about a lost garden and a colony of Edwardian artists in The Memory Garden, about the Second World War in A Gathering Storm and The Hidden Years. My father was Cornish, which meant wonderful childhood holidays spent in the county. I fell in love with its breathtakingly beautiful landscapes - rugged cliffs, picturesque fishing villages, expansive sandy beaches where the sea thunders in. I’ve feasted on its history and legends, and on stories of danger, romance, and adventure set in the region. It’s fulfilled a dream to have written my own.
As a writer I admit that I’m beguiled by Cornwall as a literary setting for high romance and adventure, yet it’s important to me to remember that ordinary people live and work there.
I was impressed by In Her Wake because it manages to encompass both extremes. Its overarching gothic narrative about a stolen child is used by the author to examine the extraordinary experience of some very humble, loving people whose lives have been put into suspension by tragedy. It’s incredibly moving and truthful.
A perfect life ... until she discovered it wasn't her own.
A tragic family event reveals devastating news that rips apart Bella's comfortable existence. Embarking on a personal journey to uncover the truth, she faces a series of traumatic discoveries that take her to the ruggedly beautiful Cornish coast, where hidden truths, past betrayals and a 25-year-old mystery threaten not just her identity, but also her life.
Chilling, complex and profoundly moving, In Her Wake is a gripping psychological thriller that questions the nature of family - and reminds us that sometimes the most shocking crimes are committed closest to…
As a Children’s Librarian for over 30 years, my passion has been for the sound of language. I want children to hear rhythmic, joyful language that will make them fall in love with words. My own career as a storyteller and author continues this same love of language. I try to write my own picture books in such a way that any adult who picks them up will read them out with the same kind of verve and joy that I put into them.
A great Thanksgiving treat. “Dancin’ in the kitchen. The family’s packed in tight. I think we may be dancin’ in the kitchin’ all night!” The family cooks, sets the table, and eats…all while dancing and chanting along. Get your beat going. Hand out spoons to beat on pans and rock along with this joyful picture book. All the way to the end, “Grandpa does the washin’. We all pitch in to dry. We’re still dancin’ in the kitchen, with the radio way up high!”
Dinner time is dancin' at Grandma's house while the chicken and dumplings simmer on the stove and all three generations of the family groove to the music on the kitchen radio, working up generous appetites.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I write to learn what I don’t know about myself and our purpose as flawed beings in this Alice-in-Wonderland world. In the documentary about singer/poet Leonard Cohen, creator of the much-covered “Hallelujah” (title of the documentary), to explain the song, he says that life is so impenetrable that the only options are to shake your fist or exclaim “Hallelujah.” I think there is a third option: to laugh. And I prefer to do all three because that is what comes through me: confusion, pain, and hilarity. And hopefully a better understanding of the whole mess once I’ve written about it. And that is what I hope to share with readers.
How I love to laugh at the same time that I’m feeling all the raw pain of being a human—in this case a human woman who runs away from home. The beginning of this book—about a housewife, cooking ware saleswoman's trip to hell and back, is belly-laugh-inducing, causing one to cough and gasp in joy. But there’s more: Gilman writes real, complicated characters, complete with pain and delusions. And the reason they are so deeply funny is that Gilman is self-aware enough to know and show their flaws better than they know them.
Titular protagonist Donna Koczynski may inhabit a particular era (one when trendiness reigns), but she is rooted in her own psychology, which includes equal parts compassion, open-minded curiosity, lunatic-level denial, and crazed she-wolf rage.
Donna Koczynski is a failed punk rocker, recovering alcoholic, and suburban mother of two teenagers whose relatively peaceful existence suddenly detonates when she comes home early from a sales conference in Vegas to find the surprise of a lifetime. Suddenly realizing that life can be more than the rut of middle-aged motherhood, she sets off on an impulsive quest to reclaim everything she believes she sacrificed since her wild youth: Friendship, great love, and art. But as she flees her family and drives across the U.S. on what she calls an "emotional scavenger hunt"(and others might call a midlife crisis),…
