A reading list for Women's History Month and beyond.
“Rachel beautifully illustrates that loving fiercely and grieving deeply are often two halves of the same whole. Her story will break you down and lift you up.” —Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Love Warrior and founder of Together Rising While on her way to teach a yoga retreat in March 2014, Rachel Brathen collapses at an airport, brought to her knees by excruciating stomach pains. She is rushed to the hospital on the tiny island of Bonaire, and hours later forced to undergo surgery. When she wakes up from anesthesia, her boyfriend is weeping at her bedside. While Rachel was struck down with seemingly mysterious pain, her best friend, Andrea, sustained fatal injuries as a result of a car accident. Rachel and Andrea had a magical friendship. Though they looked nothing alike—one girl tall, blond, and Swedish, the other short, brunette, and Colombian—everyone called them gemelas: twins. Over the three years following Andrea’s death, at what might appear from the outside to be the happiest time—with her engagement to the man she loves and a blossoming career that takes her all over the world—Rachel faces a series of trials that have the potential to define her life. Unresolved grief and trauma from her childhood make the weight of her sadness unbearable. At each turn, she is confronted again and again with a choice: Will she lose it all, succumb to grief, and grasp for control that’s beyond her reach? Or can she move through the loss and let go? When Rachel and her husband conceive a child, pregnancy becomes a time to heal and an opportunity to be reborn herself. As she recounts this transformative period, Rachel shares her hard-won wisdom about life and death, love and fear, what it means to be a mother and a daughter, and how to become someone who walks through the fire of adversity with the never-ending practice of loving hard and letting go.
Surrounded By Madness: A Memoir of Mental Illness and Family Secrets by Rachel Pruchno Ph.D. is a heart-breaking memoir of a woman who loses both her mother and daughter to mental illness. It is an honest account of a woman's desperation and powerlessness in handling a destructive illness. She tells readers to come out into the open about the illness if anyone in the family is suffering from it instead of hiding it, thinking of it as a stigma. The book also brings to light the plight of mentally ill patients and how badly equipped the system is to give them proper care and support. The author's story is gripping and thought provoking at the same time, bringing to light how their love holds them together during this dark phase. The author speaks about how the strangling grasp of mental illness destroys the person and, without being aware, how the family members succumb to the stigma of this illness and hide it. The book is a must-read for those families who are battling with this illness in their family and also to psychologists, therapists, hospitals, and psychiatrists who deal with these kinds of patients daily. It is a good read and enlightening. The author tries to protect her marriage and her son while dealing with the mental illness of her mother and daughter. It is an empowering story and the discussion questions at the end of the book will help readers evaluate what the author has tried to convey.
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Based on the memoirs of highly successful woman journalist and televison writer Lise Nørgaard, this grand-scale film, brimming with joyous satire, paints a portrait of a bygone era dominated by primarily male and infinitely bourgeois values. At the center, seen at ages 7, 12 and 24, is Lise, the on
You should celebrate Black History Month by reading all of these books right now.
After I read The Odd Woman in the City, Vivian Gornick’s engaging new memoir, I turned back to the first page and began to read it again. How does it work so well? I wondered. A short book, at 175 pages, it is one long essay. Just series of short and flash essays, separated by space breaks, yet it moves. Halfway through my second reading I saw the key. It was obvious, except I had read it so quickly before. So many scenes. Of course there’s her famous truth-telling persona, giving the low-down on herself and others. The text doesn’t rely on her opinions and confidences, on her attitude, however, but on her meeting and portraying others in dramatized action. If she’s not showing events unfold, she’s telling stories about herself, her circle, or some past denizen of the Big Apple. One vivid scene, pithy vignette, or juicy anecdote after another. Life before our eyes, as lived and perceived by this peppery child of the city. Though highly segmented, The Odd Woman and the City embodies the old-fashioned storytelling aesthetic Gornick recommends in The Situation and the Story. Here her themes include friendship, especially in New York City, walking in the city, and encounters with strangers in the city. These are the confrontations of a lonely, solitary soul. A key thread in the book is her talks and walks with her gay friend Leonard. She portrays him as equally uncomfortable in his own skin, as similarly pessimistic, as another bleakly negative—yet captivating—personality. They can’t stand each other’s company more than once a week, but that meeting’s vital to them both. Her outrageous mother, whom she portrayed at length in her classic memoir Fierce Attachments also appears.
