This year sometimes felt like an unwanted gift that just kept on giving – a constant barrage of right-wing gains, escalating crises, and exhausting political theatrics that taught us to approach every new week with a sense of trepidation. The gift that we gave ourselves in 2019 was a year of bold books that helped us find our resilience in the face of heartache and imagine a future for a world made whole with love and solidarity.
This was a year of turning away from books written about us and towards books written by and for us. “Own voices” titles asserted the tremendous value of our own experiences, and many of us saw ourselves as the heroes in the kinds of stories that we never felt reflected in before. In a year when feeling good felt like an act of defiance, books invited us to embrace joy and community care as tools of resistance. As we sought to understand how to survive the present, books gave us a glimpse into what could come next. Let us take a page from these books and approach 2020 not with dread, but with the conviction of possibility.
(See also, our 2018 Best Sellers & Collective Picks.)
Adult Nonfiction
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Race & Ethnicity
“What do you do after you have written Stamped From the Beginning, an award-winning history of racist ideas?… If you’re Ibram X. Kendi, you craft another stunner of a book… What emerges from these insights is the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind, a confessional of self-examination that may, in fact, be our best chance to free ourselves from our national nightmare.” —Jeffrey C. Stewert, author of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
Left Elsewhere: Finding the Future In Radical Rural America by Elizabeth Catte
US Domestic Politics
“Historian Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia offered a more nuanced take [on Appalachia], addressing the way white men, outsiders and tourist journalists have all got it wrong. While urban liberals wring their hands and conservatives complain about lazy welfare recipients, [What You Are Getting Wrong] represents a much wider range of voices, motivations and experiences exist than are usually portrayed in the media. In Left Elsewhere, Catte continues to develop her complex picture of rural America while looking for possible futures for its political left.” —Justin Cober-Lake, Spectrum Culture
Occult Features of Anarchism: With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples by Erica Lagalisse
Anarchism
“[The] hidden or 'occult' legacy of revolutionary politics is now largely forgotten, disregarded by a radical culture that identifies itself as militantly atheist and rationalist. Yet its mark remains, and not always for the best… Lagalisse’s work calls anarchists to task for the self-limiting mentalities and behaviors that have narrowed the appeal and impact of our ideas by centering them in an intellectual tradition that still looks a lot like the world we are trying to change… Not many books are truly 'essential reading,' but if you think of yourself as an anarchist you cannot afford to miss this.” —Christopher Scott Thompson, author of Pagan Anarchism
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown
Organizing & Activism
“This collection offers up a multitude of tactics for which to embody pleasure, claim it as a central and essential liberatory practice, and a sustainable one for the long-term road trip of justice work… [W]e often talk about what sucks, what we don’t want, and what needs to be torn down. In order to build a better world, to move towards the goals of decolonization, abolition, and liberation, Pleasure Activism tells us, we need to 'practice for the world we want'… We don’t have to just give our blood, sweat, and tears to this project, but share our pleasure, too. We can—we must—bring all of all of us.” —Bani Amor, Autostraddle
Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran
Feminism
"Samaran steps into academic and colloquial language seamlessly in a way that makes complex theoretical ideas digestible for a wider audience outside of the academic spaces these theories initially originated in… Ultimately, Turn This World Inside Out is an imperative text for our modern times. Samaran deftly demonstrates the need for this type of book throughout her essays and dialogues. This slender tome will be sure to draw readers in for providing answers to the questions people in positions of privilege have." —Dena Rod, author of My Shadow is My Skin (Spring 2020)
We've Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health - Stories and Research Challenging the Bio-Medical Model by L. D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh
Mind & Body
“Justice is not possible unless we make space for the stories of the margins. What more powerful elucidation can there be than to cast light on the margins of the mind? We've Been Too Patient shreds stigma and replaces it with dignity, autonomy, and power. This anthology heralds the necessity of our messy radical neurodivergent brains, so that we might call forth a world where we are never again forced to be ‘too patient.’” —Sonya Renee Taylor, author of The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
Adult Fiction
A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams
Visionary Short Stories
“A People's Future of the United States is not a simple read, nor a comfortable one. It begins from the premise that our current precarious situation will almost certainly get much worse. But within all of the futures contained here, there remain people, people whose marginalizations, whose existence on the edges of what some ideologies would think of as America, have given them profound depths of resilience. These futures are not easy. But they show us how we too might find ways to live, and live well, no matter what is coming.” —Arkady Martine, author of A Memory Called Empire
LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia edited by Jeff Mann and Julia Watts
Queer Poetry & Prose
“With LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia, Jeff Mann and Julia Watts have assembled a first-of-its-kind collection of works by queer Appalachians. Fans of the poetry of that most famous Appalachian writer, bell hooks, will find that the region is fertile territory for writers of all stripes, from the somewhat experimental feminist poetry of Doris Diosa Davenport to the heartrending teenage queerdom represented in Jonathan Corcoran’s The Rope Swing.” —Carling Mars, author of Feeling Things in Public Places
Magic for Liars: A Novel by Sarah Gailey
Fantasy Noir
“Magic for Liars is a perfect, spare, delectable novel that features a masterful narrative structure, terribly human characters occupying realistically magical settings, and more. The prose is spot-on and paints an intimate, flawed portrait of how a world like Gamble’s would function, from the moment she tells the disbelieving bartender magic exists to the moment she walks out on her sister. I can’t recommend it highly enough.” —Brit Mandelo, author of Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction
Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom: A Story by Sylvia Plath
Surreal Novella
This newly published Sylvia Plath story “is stirring, in sneaky, unexpected ways… It’s unabashedly Freudian (and Plath herself seemed ambivalent about its merits), but look carefully and there’s a new angle here… It is not the familiar story about a heroine and her solitary triumph but a story about aid—the aid women can provide each other; and aid that is possible only from other generations, from those who know something of the journey.” —Parul Sehgal, New York Times
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Poetic Autofiction
“The structural hallmarks of Vuong’s poetry—his skill with elision, juxtaposition, and sequencing—shape the novel… and they work on overlapping scales: passages are organized by recurring phrases, as are the chapters, which build momentum as a poetry collection does, line by line… On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is both an immigrant novel and a work of autofiction; it is also an epistolary novel, written, loosely, as a letter to the narrator’s mother, which she will never read.” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
Queer Bildungsroman
“Investigating an impressively broad range of queer sexual encounters spanning multiple sexual communities. The result is an adamantly pro-queer, pro-sex novel. It’s not just the frank depictions of sex that mark the novel as rooted in the 90s… [the protagonist] is an historical creature, made in and of the 90s, where he hops between queer cultures from Iowa City to Boystown Chicago to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, from Provincetown to San Francisco, with ACT UP-era New York beating strong in the background. If Andrea has written a historical novel, it’s history made present-tense, 90s queer politics refracted through the lens of contemporary queer and trans discourse.” —Megan Milks, author of The Feels
Books for Young Readers
Hi, it’s me, your weird gay aunt. I’m coming to Christmas in my Subaru while drinking an unsweetened espresso beverage and listening to a podcast about the sinking of the Lusitania. I got you books.
All the Ways to Be Smart by Davina Bell
Picture Book, Poetry
"Every page of this book is joyous, imaginative and life-affirming. Written in rhyming text that does not falter, it’s great fun to read aloud, and would merit many re-readings and further discussions between adults and children. Colpoys’ distinctive illustrations are perfectly matched to the text. They are playful and full of movement and vivacity, with a sophisticated palette of green, apricot, blue and black that imparts a charming retro aesthetic, while still feeling contemporary in tone and content. All the Ways to be Smart is a celebration of what childhood can be, and it will likely become a classic." —Louise Pfanner, author of Louise Builds a House
Best Friends by Shannon Hale
Middle Grade, Graphic Fiction
”Based on the author’s own childhood, Best Friends, by Shannon Hale, is an engaging, funny, and endearing look at adolescence and what it means to be a good friend. The graphic novel format, expertly illustrated by LeUyen Pham, offers a new spin on a perennially important topic, letting readers literally see Shannon’s anxiety and emotions. Hale and Pham also manage to seamlessly blend the plot with excerpts from Shannon’s writing, taken directly from Hale’s real-life sixth grade journals. Shannon’s fantasy novel ties in with the struggles she faces in her daily life, so that readers finds themselves cheering for both the sixth grader and the fantasy heroine she longs to be.” —Jesse Farrow, Central Rappahannock Regional Library
Don't Touch My Hair! by Sharee Miller
Picture Book, Consent
“Miller’s book offers an unique take on people treating natural hair as a foreign curiosity, but, it’s ultimately a book about consent for children. It’s a complicated subject, but the inviting primary color illustrations, also by Miller, make it easy to forget that she’s teaching an important lesson. Though the issue of consent could seem daunting, Don’t Touch My Hair gives Aria the power to tell people not to touch her hair, without an adult needing to swoop in and handle it for her. It’s a universal lesson within the specificity of the black community, and though the book is relevant and educational, it maintains a fun and compassionate lightness." —Esme Douglas, Entertainment Weekly
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
Middle Grade, Space Opera
“Buckle up, fellow foxes. Get ready for epic space battles, magic and lasers, ghosts and dragons, interstellar pirates and warlike galactic tigers. The Thousand Worlds hold all sorts of danger, but there are also priceless magical treasures to be discovered.… The Dragon Pearl will be like nothing you’ve ever read: A zesty mix of Korean folklore, magic and science fiction that will leave you longing for more adventures in the Thousand Worlds!” —Rick Riordan, author of Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Guts by Raina Telgemeier
Middle Grade, Graphic Fiction
“What drove me to share Telgemeier’s latest book, Guts… was not her rendering of the social ecology of fourth grade—though her skill at that puts her in the rarefied company of writers like Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary—but rather the accuracy and vividness with which she conveys the phenomenology of anxiety.” —Scott Stossel, author of My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind
Hands to Heart: Breathe and Bend with Animal Friends by Alex Bauermeister
Picture Book, Mind & Body
Bauermeister shows us that we are never too young to learn to connect to our body through our breath. Hands to Heart leads us through fundamental poses with the help of a lilting rhyme and some animal friends. A cow drops their belly to illustrate cow pose as a brown lab stretches back into downward-dog pose. These beautiful illustrations will gently inspire your young person to embrace a movement practice.
Intersectionallies: We Make Room for All by Carolyn Choi, LaToya Council, and Chelsea Johnson
Picture Book, Feminism
“If ever a book belonged in every pediatrician’s office, clinic, daycare, shelter, classroom and home, this is it. Introducing the revolutionary concept of “making room” as a means of inclusion as opposed to “tolerance” and “respect” (which while meaningful don’t actually make a case for interpersonal relationship) makes this a stunner of a primer in how to incorporate entirety. That a significant part of the text is dedicated to the adult reader makes this book valuable for all ages.” —Lucy Kogler, Lit Hub contributor
It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity by Theresa Thorn
Picture Book, LGBTQ
“Aimed at small children, It Feels Good to Be Yourself tackles what could be an overly complex subject by reducing it to the simple message at the core of the gender acceptance movement: however you feel about yourself is the right way to feel about yourself, and the people who love you still love you however you feel about yourself—and being a good person means letting other people define themselves and respecting their choices.” —Cory Doctorow, author of In Real Life
Migration: Incredible Animal Journeys by Mike Unwin
Picture Book, Non-human Animals
“A bat-speckled sky over Kasanka Forest, a colorful blizzard of monarchs in a Mexican wood, penguins ribboning across an Antarctic plateau, a sea of scuttling scarlet crabs—these are some of the dazzling images that make turning every page of this book a delight… Desmond’s expert illustrations—created with watercolor, acrylic, ink, pencil, and pencil crayon—shimmer on the page, capturing the fragility and abundance of the natural world.” —Publishers Weekly
My Heart by Corinna Luyken
Picture Book, Fiction
“How does the human heart—that ancient beast, whose roars and purrs have inspired sonnets and ballads and wars, defied myriad labels too small to hold its pulses, and laid lovers and empires at its altar—unbusy itself from self-consciousness and learn to be a heart? That is what artist and illustrator Corinna Luyken explores in the lyrical and lovely My Heart—an emotional intelligence primer in the form of an uncommonly tender illustrated poem about the tessellated capacities of the heart, about love as a practice rather than a state, about how it can frustrate us, brighten us, frighten us, and ultimately expand us.” —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia
Middle Grade, West African Folklore
“[What] distinguishes Mbalia’s book is that underpinning Tristan’s adventure is the true story of West Africans being captured, chained, transported across the ocean and sold as slaves into the plantations of America… Indeed, this novel reminds us why myths exist. They’re not simply stories to entertain. They tell us who we are. Where we came from. What’s worth fighting for. They remind us to keep telling the stories. And Mbalia has done that.” —John Stephens, author of The Emerald Atlas
What Is a Refugee? by Elise Gravel
Picture Book, War & Imperialism
“Any child exposed to the news these days may wonder about refugees, and a picture book is a great way to learn about them. Gravel’s bubbly, cartoon-style art and plain-spoken explanations help soften the truth’s harsh edges—starting with the fact that they “had to flee their country because they were in danger.” The whole package makes it easy to empathize, conveying gently that “a refugee is a person, just like you and me.” —Maria Russo, author of How to Raise a Reader