Reading through the recent NYT article “12 New Books We’re Reading this Summer (and 6 Not So New),” with the list of summer reading by their book critics and staff, I was reminded that it is time to come up with my own summer reading challenge book list with a health humanities and social justice slant. Also, I was reminded to come up with a more diverse reading list than the one offered by the NYT. I did similar list last summer (see previous blog post, Summer Reading Challenge with a Health Humanities/Social Justice slant ( June 2, 2015), with subsequent posts on my reading progress and reviews of the books.
My Summer 2016 Reading Challenge list of fifteen books is mainly composed of books I’ve acquired over the past few months during my cross-country travels, as well as from both the Association of Writers and Writers Programs (AWP) Conference in Los Angeles and the Health Humanities Consortium meeting in Cleveland. Four of the books on my list are truly ‘new’ books and the rest are new-to-me books. Here they are, listed from the bottom up as shown in the photo above:
- Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment, by psychotherapist and anti-oppression trainer Leticia Nieto and her colleagues (Olympia, Washington: Cuetzpalin Publishing, 2014).
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Mathew Desmond (New York: Crown Publishers, 2016).
- Like Something Flying Backwards, by C.D. Wright (Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2007).
- See You in the Streets: Art, Action, and Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, by Ruth Sergel (Iowa City: Iowa UP, 2016).
- Tenderly Lift Me: Nurses Honored, Celebrated, and Remembered, by Jeanne Bryner (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State UP, 2004).
- The Poetry of Nursing, edited by Judy Schaefer( Kent, Ohio: The Kent State UP, 2006).
- The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing, by Cortney Davis (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State UP, 2009).
- Wider Than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson, edited by Cindy MacKenzie and Barbara Dana (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State UP, 2007).
- Tender the Maker, Christina Hutchins (Boulder, Colorado: Utah State UP, 2015). Note: Christina is a fellow Community of Writers at Squaw Valley alumna.
- Bodies and Barriers: Dramas of Dis-Ease, edited by Angela Belli (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State UP, 2008).
- The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey to Change Elder Care, edited by Anne Basting, Maureen Towey, and Ellie Rose (Iowa City: Iowa UP, 2016).
- Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net, by Josephine Ensign (Berkeley: She Writes Press, 2016). Note: Yes, this is a familiar-to-me book, but I will be reading the hot-off-the-press final book through a reader’s (as opposed to a writer’s) eyes. Plus, it was just named the University of Washington Health Sciences Common Book for academic year 2016/17, so I’d better be extra familiar with its contents by the time fall quarter rolls around. They are finishing up work with the 2015/16 Common Book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.
- Palace of Books, by Roger Grenier (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2014). Note: I bought this book at the Palace of Books Bookstore, the Library of Congress, during my recent stay in Washington, DC.
- The Beautiful Struggle, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2008).
- Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, by Rebecca Solnit (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016).
Happy and thoughtful and humanistic summer reading everyone!
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