Author Picks: 11 Female Writers Who Taught Me About the World

About five years ago, I decided that I wanted to read a minimum of fifty books a year, cover to cover. This was the first book I read the first year of my self-imposed reading challenge, and it is still, over three hundred books later, my favorite. Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther and member of the Black Liberation Army, alternates chapters between telling the story of her arrest and trial for her alleged involvement in the killing of a state trooper and stories from her childhood that led her into activism, the two narratives meeting at the end of the book. Her stories are alternately harrowing and funny and sweet and heartbreaking, and for me, no autobiography can ever match up to this. If I could magically make everyone read one book, this would be my choice, without hesitation.

I am absolutely, possibly unreasonably, terrified of losing myself as I age, of forgetting who I am. I think it’s very common, especially if you have children or a career you throw yourself into, to become a little detached from the person you thought or hoped you’d be. I am desperate to do everything in my life, to maximize my time here on earth, which is why, perhaps, I’m anxious about aging. Aging means making decisions, picking a track. Mary Laura Philpott wrote I MISS YOU WHEN I BLINK precisely to address my concerns. Okay, no she didn’t, but I adored reading this book from a smart, capable, introspective woman with children and a career who felt utterly lost. And I loved reading how she coped with it. This book gave me a lot of hope for my own future, which is just such an underrated gift.

I’m going to cheat here a little and tell you that on top of the book THICK, which I will get to in one second, you also absolutely must read Dr. McMillan Cottom’s essay on Dolly Parton titled “The Dolly Moment.” Okay, now that you’re done with that, you’re undoubtedly looking to read literally anything else she’s written, and I have great news: THICK. Like the Dolly essay, THICK holds a mirror up to American society and looks closely at what is reflected; the book of essays covers cultural touchstones as varied as Miley Cyrus, Trump rallies, capitalism, white hegemony in beauty standards, healthcare for Black women, Twitter replies, and McMillan Cottom’s mother The Vivian.

Every single essay of this hilarious book made me feel like someone was writing a book for me. SHRILL is about being perceived as too loud, too opinionated, and too fat, all of which were (and often still are) major formative concerns of mine. Here is a brilliant, brilliant writer taking my fears and my beliefs and my insecurities and setting them to riotously funny and emotionally resonant stories. I have read and reread this book so many times, and each time a new section means something more to me. And I will always, always think of West describing having her hair up in a ponytail as looking like a “tennis ball on top of a minifridge.”

My father and I have this little pen-palish thing going on where we send books back and forth to each other, sometimes with a note or an explanation or a theme, often without. I sent this book to him because he studied astronomy in college—he was in college or grad school for almost thirteen years, and he studied almost everything—and I couldn’t stop thinking about the book, so I bought it for myself too. This book is astounding; I won’t lie to you and say it doesn’t take a little bit of effort to read—before picking up Mack’s book, the last time I did any reading that involved physics was about a decade ago—but that effort is so rewarded. Katie Mack gifts readers with the luxury of theory, the present of wondering about things just for the sake of wondering. This might be the most literal entry in the books that changed how I think about the world, but on a deeper level, I loved reading about science as an adult. I loved the reminder, via both the universe and Mack’s writing, that we are rather small and insignificant in the scheme of things—which I feel makes it all so much more miraculous that we’re here.

My freshman year of college, I took a class titled “Women in Revolutions in the Middle East,” and this book was required reading. If I’m remembering correctly, this was the first nonfiction book I was ever assigned to read that was written by a woman. It was certainly the first memoir by a woman I was required to read, and it is perhaps what made me fall in love with memoirs as a genre—the exploration of identity, watching the slow process of a writer learning to become herself, of discovering who she is. I don’t know a better way to learn about the world than to read people recounting how life is or was for them.

This book changed the way I think about adoption, challenged the assumptions I’ve made about it, and sent me on a journey to read more from adult transracial adoptees. ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW is a gorgeous exploration of the complexities of family, how race and culture shape us all, and the routes we all take to figure out who we are. I am a complete sucker for books about family and the ways in which each member of a family can hold a separate truth, and Nicole Chung’s book covers this beautifully.

I am, I’m sorry to say, utterly fascinated by adultery. I am riveted by affairs—the why, the how, the excitement, the comedown, the reveal, the reaction of those around us, the moral lines we don’t expect to cross. Most writing on cheating deals in the hypothetical, the fictional. It’s somewhat rare to read testimony from inside a real-life affair. Gina Frangello lays her shit bare; she is so willing to share herself, to scoop her guts out and put them on the page—which is, of course, what a good memoir should be, but which is very difficult to actually do without flinching. My God, it’s triumphant.

Yes, I know I just admitted to my affinity for reading about infidelity, but I also genuinely believe that every person who is in a romantic relationship or who wants to ever be in one can benefit from the wisdom of Esther Perel. She is positively unmatched in the arena of relationships. Not only do I recommend this book and her other book, MATING IN CAPTIVITY, but I also love her podcast Where Should We Begin? where you can just listen in to her couples therapy sessions. Perel is fabulous at working backwards from people’s actions to figure out what they’re actually searching for. She’s marvelous at being both empathetic and sympathetic to people, even when they do wrong. Please, just read everything she writes!

I write about sex for a living and have for five years now. I have said just about every single dirty word you can imagine in a professional setting. I read a lot about sex. I did not, therefore, expect to learn much from this book. And boy oh boy was I wrong! Recently I was at a café with a friend and my boyfriend, where they were working, and I was reading this book, and every few pages I brought their productivity to a screeching halt to share sex ed updates that floored me. Like, why didn’t I know that “if a hymen tears or bruises, it heals?” Or that hymens don’t actually bleed when they break? Or that platypuses just leak milk from their bellies? (Okay, the last detail isn’t as relevant to human sex.) And this is just in the first fifty pages! Everyone—everyone—should read this book.

Look, we weren’t going to make it through this list without Nora. You cannot possibly go wrong with almost any of her writing, whether it be on cholesterol, red coats, or Arubas, but this collection in particular shines. I so clearly remember this book on my mother’s nightstand when I was growing up, and after I read it for the first time at age nineteen, I understood why my mother kept it close at hand. This book feels like having lunch with your favorite, fabulous, hilarious aunt. Nora is unmatched in cracking open her life and the lives of those around her with clever observations. It is beyond clichéd for an essay writer to point to Ephron as foundational, but she showed me (and everyone) that the genre could be as quippy and fun as it is important.

WELL, THIS IS EXHAUSTING comes out on July 13!

Like so many women, Sophia Benoit spent her formative years struggling to do the “right” thing—to make others comfortable, to take minimal and calculated risks, to live up to society’s expectations—only to realize that there was so little payoff to this tiresome balancing act.

Now, in WELL, THIS IS EXHAUSTING, she shares her journey from aspiring good girl to proud feminist, and addresses the constantly shifting goalposts of what exactly it means to be “good” in today’s world. Including topics as varied and laugh-out-loud funny as how to be the life of the party (even when you have crippling anxiety), navigating the disappointments of the dating world, and why no one should judge you for having an encyclopedic knowledge of reality TV stars, these essays are sure to move, motivate, and charm you.