Here are 100 books that On Lies, Secrets, and Silence fans have personally recommended if you like
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I'm an activist/scholar and I taught in the Feminist Studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz for 40 years. My most popular class was Introduction to Feminism. Then I taught another large, undergraduate course Feminism & Social Justice. By the time I retired I had taught over 16,000 students, and worked with scores of graduate students. My online class, Feminism & Social Justice, on the Coursera Platform has been taken by over 107,000 people located on literally every continent. My teaching and writings are always anti-racist, and explicitly queer. They've drawn on my life experiences. They come out of my passion to lessen suffering, and embrace compassion.
Gloria AnzaldĂșa was born and raised in South Texas, growing up along the U.S.-Mexican border. For many years she lived in San Francisco, and then in Santa Cruz, California.
The first 113 pages of the book are stories and essays drawn from her life experiences as a woman of Mexican and Indian heritage, daily experiencing life at the physical border between the United States and Mexico.
She was raised in a strongly Catholic tradition, while also drawn to and inventing her own spirituality rooted in indigenous practices of harmony, balance, and reverence for the earth. She was a lesbian in a straight world that condemned her woman-loving sensibility.
"The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country--a border culture."--Gloria AnzaldĂșa
Rooted in Gloria AnzaldĂșa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA: THE NEW MESTIZA profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity. BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA remaps our understanding of what a "border" is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, butâŠ
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 runâŠ
I was an odd kidâa bookworm worried about why I was different from others. Luckily, my family continuously reminded me that I belonged. Once out of the closet, I was able to appreciate the importance of families, both chosen and unchosen. I became a writer because I was compelled to articulate that importance and maybe help others understand how knowledge, trauma, emotions, and love move between the generations. Queer and family histories have inspired a lot of my journalism and fiction, but especially my new novel, This Is It. I hope it fits alongside these recommendations that explore queer multi-generational stories with wit, intelligence, and wisdom.
This book gripped me from the opening page. Itâs everything I usually avoidâcomics, suspense, memoir, psychology articleâbut the way it's calibrated invited me in, then wouldnât let me leave until Iâd lapped up every detail. By setting up her childhood review as a mystery that has to be solved through visual exploration, Alison Bechdel justifies every choice she makes. And they are all correct.
With deadpan humor and wry drawings, Fun Home gave me a thickly layered exploration of how queer elements impacted generations of her family. It never felt navel-gazing, and I found it impossible to imagine the story told any other way than in a graphics.
DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.
'A sapphic graphic treat' The Times
A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.
Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement isâŠ
Judith Jones became an important mentor and mother figure to me in my twenties, in the wake of my parentsâ deaths. Her personal wisdom and guidance, which I received both in knowing her personally and from the incredible archive she left behind, have been invaluable to me during a particularly tumultuous and transformative decade in my own life. I wrote The Editor as I was coming into my full adulthood, and the books on this list helped shape my thinking along the way at times when I felt stagnant or stuck or needed to rethink both how to write Judithâs life and why her story is so vital to tell.
Lordeâs landmark collection of essays amplifies ways of living and knowing long familiar to women and other marginalized groups. Her exploration of eroticismâa fully vivacious, embodied experience of lifeâas a source of womenâs knowledge, wisdom, and power is yet unmatched in American letters.
Essential reading for anyone who has felt unsatisfied or unseen by the narratives handed down by the white, heteronormative, patriarchal powers that continue to hold our imaginations in a vice grip.Â
The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep
The revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women'. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches, letters, interviews - explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship, the erotic and the need for female solidarity, and includes her landmark piece 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House'.
'The truth of her writing is as necessary today asâŠ
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother hadâŠ
Life is stories, man. Telling stories. Listening to stories. One day, somebody had the brilliant idea to start writing these stories down. And thatâs what weâve been doing ever since. Trading yarns. Figuring things out. Reading and writing. I wrote my first story in middle school. My first novel in college. My first published novel (This Way Madness Lies) in my late twenties. Now itâs thirty years, twenty-five novels, fifty short stories, and three books of poetry later, and Iâm still as obsessed with and passionate about storytelling as I was as a young buck backpacking around Europe with a notebook and a beat-up copy of Down and Out in London and Paris stuffed into my leather satchel.
I was on an extended trip to Eastern Europe, back when Eastern Europe was not such a dandy place to visit, and I found myself with nothing to read. In a used bookstore in Prague, I found a tattered paperback, translated into English, of this next pick. It was falling apart, the pages stained by coffee and God knows what else. I bought it anyway.
And over the next few weeks, I was, for the third time, blown away by words on a page, by an authorâs imagination. Itâs been said that Don Quixote, written around 1600, was the first novel ever written. It may also be the greatest novel ever written. Adventure. Humor. Pathos. Crazy amounts of imagination. The Whole Damn Human Condition.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD BLOOM. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.
I am passionate about the subject of suicide because I have lived with suicidal thinking all of my life, have made multiple suicide attempts, have lost loved ones to suicide, and have so many new friends who are survivors of suicide attempts. I am a philosophy professor and writer who spends a lot of his time thinking about the meaning of life, and reading other philosophers, writers, and thinkers who have taught us about the meaning of life. I think the Buddha is especially smart and helpful on this question, as are the existentialist philosophers.
If you only read one book by Dostoevsky, this should be the one. The psychiatrist who directed the Mayo Clinicâs mental health division for years often had his patients read all of Dostoevskyâs works.
The Idiot is about a truly innocent and good man, Prince Myshkin, who is thrust into the highest levels of Russian aristocratic society. Although he understands that deception is essential to thrive in this world, he refuses to give up his guilelessness.
He is always as honest as he can be with everyone around him, and as kind as he can be, and as caring as he can be (he is a Christ figure, also a child figure). This all turns out very badly, unsurprisingly, and results in heartbreak and murder.
There is no greater novel ever written for teaching us about the human capacity and need for human love, and the many obstacles we haveâŠ
Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction and Notes by Agnes Cardinal, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent.
Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum in Switzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the frantic amatory and financial intrigues which centre around a cast of brilliantly realised characters and which ultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a unique combination of the Christian ideal of perfection and Dostoevsky's own views, afflictions and manners. His serene selflessness is contrasted with the worldly qualities of every other character in the novel. Dostoevsky supplies a harsh indictment ofâŠ
I'm an activist/scholar and I taught in the Feminist Studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz for 40 years. My most popular class was Introduction to Feminism. Then I taught another large, undergraduate course Feminism & Social Justice. By the time I retired I had taught over 16,000 students, and worked with scores of graduate students. My online class, Feminism & Social Justice, on the Coursera Platform has been taken by over 107,000 people located on literally every continent. My teaching and writings are always anti-racist, and explicitly queer. They've drawn on my life experiences. They come out of my passion to lessen suffering, and embrace compassion.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1940s and 1950s. As one of New York Cityâs 5 boroughs it has character and even a mystique about it, and we Brooklynites are often very proud of our heritage.
Until I was about 13 the Brooklyn Dodgers were the zany, irreverent, baseball upstarts who sometimes even won the World Series. And they hired Jackie Robinson, desegregating professional baseball. All of this is to say that when High Ryan published his book, I devoured it as it fused my Brooklyn heritage and my queer identity.
Starting with poet Walt Whitman, he takes us through the writers, the dock workers, the socialists, the communists, the college professors and artists, who were lesbian or gay and both shaped and were shaped by the city, Ryanâs archival research is amazing, and his writing style breezy, and accessible. Even if youâre not from Brooklyn (!)âŠ
The never-before-told story of Brooklynâs vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s up to the present day.
***An ALA GLBT Round Table Over the Rainbow 2019 Top Ten Selection*** ***NAMED ONE OF THE BEST LGBTQ BOOKS OF 2019 by Harper's Bazaar***
"A romantic, exquisite history of gay culture." âKirkus Reviews, starred
â[A] boisterous, motley new history...entertaining and insightful.â âThe New York Times Book Review
Hugh Ryanâs When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at theâŠ
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man sheâŠ
Iâve been living in and writing about Japan for two decadesâitâs where my wife and I have raised a bicultural family and where I donât think Iâll ever run out of stories I want to tell. Whether written by Japanese or non-Japanese, I love reading work that documents Japan and its culture in an honest and thoughtful way. I hope youâll try some of the books on this list because, with so much Japan coverage today veering towards cultural exoticism and fetishism or leaning on familiar stereotypes and tropes, itâs even more important to seek out great Japanese writing.
Basho is best known as Japanâs most influential haikuist, but this book is a reminder that he is also one of the great early travel writers.
The haiku-punctuated accounts of Bashoâs travels offer evocative glimpses of life and spirituality in 17th-century Japan. Through Bashoâs interest in documenting the natural world, we can also start to understand the lasting importance of nature in Japanese culture.Â
'It was with awe That I beheld Fresh leaves, green leaves, Bright in the sun'
When the Japanese haiku master Basho composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North, he was an ardent student of Zen Buddhism, setting off on a series of travels designed to strip away the trappings of the material world and bring spiritual enlightenment. He writes of the seasons changing, the smell of the rain, the brightness of the moon and the beauty of the waterfall, through which he sensed the mysteries of the universe. These writings not only chronicle Basho's travels, but they also captureâŠ
I am passionate about the subject of suicide because I have lived with suicidal thinking all of my life, have made multiple suicide attempts, have lost loved ones to suicide, and have so many new friends who are survivors of suicide attempts. I am a philosophy professor and writer who spends a lot of his time thinking about the meaning of life, and reading other philosophers, writers, and thinkers who have taught us about the meaning of life. I think the Buddha is especially smart and helpful on this question, as are the existentialist philosophers.
The moral outrage of Audre Lorde is always directed at making the world a better place.
That is her great genius: she can see everything that is wrong, and knows how to awaken in each of us the desire to make things better. She also understands that every revolution begins with a single human being deciding that she, he or they can be a better person and help to make a better world.
Her spirituality is like the ocean: magnificent, scary, greater than us. Sheâs also perhaps the most important poet of the twentieth century and for the twenty-first century, so sheâs just indispensable reading. Absolutely required.
If you havenât already spent time with her work, you should read âPowerâ on the Poetry Foundation website today, before you look at any of the books I list above. It will take three minutes and may well change your view of poetryâŠ
"These are poems which blaze and pulse on the page."-Adrienne Rich "The first declaration of a black, lesbian feminist identity took place in these poems, and set the terms-beautifully, forcefully-for contemporary multicultural and pluralist debate."-Publishers Weekly "This is an amazing collection of poetry by . . . one of our best contemporary poets. . . . Her poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving."-Chuckanut Reader Magazine "What a deep pleasure to encounter Audre Lorde's most potent genius . . . you will welcome the sheer accessibility and the force and beauty of this volume."-Out Magazine
As a veteran business and finance journalist, Iâve always been amazed at the huge gender gap that still exists in so many parts of the economy and society despite all the strides weâve ostensibly made. When I became a mother, it became even clearer to me that gender norms are still so entrenched in culture and still have a huge bearing on womenâs economic and professional lives. Iâve written about this topic for a whole host of publications, from the BBC to The Washington Post. I have an MBA from Columbia Business School and am an associate Instructor in the Strategic Communications program at Columbiaâs School of Professional Studies.
I loved this book because it simultaneously gives us a taste of the fierce spirit of the womenâs liberation movement but also demonstrates what was wrong with Friedanâs particular flavor of feminism at the time: namely, that it was centered around white and mostly privileged women.
Reading this book is like being transported back to the 1960s and being a fly on the wall in the homes of women who were done with the patriarchy, who wanted to have careers and earn money, but were also grappling with their own roles in society.
Itâs a historical document but also, in some ways, the 1960s equivalent of reality TV. Itâs a ferocious cri de coeur that is delightful in its assertiveness.
Landmark, groundbreaking, classic-these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of "the problem that has no name": the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women's confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle,âŠ
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 worldâs most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the bookâŠ
I love to read. A life-changing event in 1997, started my journey into writing and eventually into my conversion to Judaism. Many years later, Iâve come to realize that there are grains of truth in every faith tradition and I search for those truths in my own life. Currently, I have four books in print, writing under the pen names of Brenda Ray (The Hebrew Midwives Trilogy) and B. K. Ricotta (Two of a Kind and A Love So Sweet). Two other novels (Book 1 and 2 of the Econfina Creek Series) are in the works.
This book was part of my womenâs studies in nurse-midwifery school at the University of Florida. It affirmed what I already knew on a soul level about how womenâs senses hold unique sub-strata. We âknowâ but have been unable to define the âwhyâ over the centuries. As an empath, this book resonated with me and helped me understand how my gift brought to the bedside when caring for women at the most primal moments of their lives, was innate. It taught me how to trust my instincts.
Despite the progress of the women's movement, many women still feel silenced in their families and schools. This moving and insightful bestseller, based on in-depth interviews with 135 women, explains why they feel this way. Updated with a new preface exploring how the authors' collaboration and research developed, this tenth anniversary edition addresses many of the questions that the authors have been asked repeatedly in the years since Women's Ways of Knowing was originally published.
