100 books like At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream

This is quite possibly my favourite memoir ever written. It made me laugh, cry and scream. Never have I seen such a clearly dysfunctional family that didn’t even realize they were dysfunctional.

I loved them because they embraced life no matter what and hated them because they didn’t see how bad what they were doing to one another was. Full of elements and emotions from my own childhood, this book made me feel deeply and emotionally.  

I love this book for its intricate examination of how past secrets and traumas shape our current selves.

The book's deep dive into the complexities of motherhood and identity against a suburban backdrop made me reflect on my own family dynamics and the silent, unseen forces at play. It’s a heart-wrenching tale of what it means to be a mother in all forms and how our children reflect these struggles back to us.

I borrowed Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim from a friend years back, and instantly fell in love with David Sedaris. 

I could have picked any book by Mr. Sedaris - they are all brilliant and have been hugely influential in my writing journey—but I vividly remember reading the chapter "Six to Eight Black Men", which beautifully illustrates a Dutch Christmas cultural tradition and shows it up in all its whacky weirdness, solely through storytelling and observation. Alone in my bedroom, I remember having to put the book down because I was howling with laughter. 

David Sedaris is the master of pinpointing the ludicrous, seemingly without effort or trying to be funny. 

He is one of my heroes. I think I became a bit obsessed.

Things Unsaid provides the best reason why not everyone who marries should have children. Seriously, if you don’t like children, don’t have children! And yet, we can still be entertained by reading about those mothers who don’t deserve the title. Diana Y. Paul’s novel paints an in-depth character study while also examining the hardship that follows neglected children after they enter adulthood, trying to fit into their new roles as parents and caregivers of aging parents.

Best read with a red Zinfandel (Just to be clear…red, not white).

I like this book because it forces us to rethink what the Cold War really was. The book identifies key figures in anti-communist crusades in post-World War II Detroit: workers, white homeowners, city officials, Catholics, and manufacturing executives, and argues that the core elements of their “anticommunism” were not fears of Soviet incursion, but sociocultural tensions at home that derived from drastic changes in wartime and postwar Detroit, which observed a sudden influx of African Americans, Southern whites, and immigrants. 

Thus, the book argues that Cold War Detroit’s “anticommunism” was not a new development in the postwar era, but a continuation of what had previously been labeled anti-unionism, white-supremacism, anti-secular Catholicism, and anti-New deal sentiments, all of which can be characterized as expressions of ongoing “anti-modernist” tensions within American society. Such a reexamination of Cold War anti-communism is significant because it could open up new territory for rethinking what anticommunism… show more.

I’d normally abstain from the pompous sin of quoting one’s own fiction, but I’m doing it here only to contextualize this recommendation.

“Adolescence is an exercise in coveting what exists just beyond our grasp,” my book’s narrator tells us in his preamble to his telling of Foster’s story. “It is this inaccessibility that sustains its magic.” To be fifteen is to be a voyeur looking wistfully in on the poignancy of others’ lives: this is the idea I tried to operationalize through the narrator’s project, with full knowledge that I’d never do it as lyrically as The Virgin Suicides. 

Nominally, the main characters of Eugenides’ debut are the five titular Lisbon sisters, who successively take their own lives, but we encounter them chiefly as figments of a collective imagination: in the captivated minds of a faceless group of teenage boys who witness the tragedies from afar.

As a sort of… show more.

I adore this book as it feels deeply woven with the legacy of Octavia Butler: gripping, socially engaged science fiction that is full of brilliant information about how to survive societal collapse.

I appreciate how adrienne shines a light on grief as it relates to the various social conditions that create hardship for folks. This systemic lack of care makes it hard for many folks to have their needs met in life, let alone have a dignified death. I gobbled this book up and was very sad to have finished it.  

This was a bittersweet read for me. I grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, a post-industrial city that was a shadow of the bustling place it was when my parents were growing up there in the 1940s and 50s. Young’s recounting of his return to the city of his childhood, Flint, Michigan, speaks to all of us who long not just for the places that we think we know but for those places that had already ceased to exist before we were born.

At the same time, Young’s poetic exploration of place, tinged with nostalgia, teaches us that even the cities and towns hardest hit by the unforgiving forces of globalization and corporate capitalism and haunted by ghosts of past prosperity can be fertile with new possibilities and new stories. 

Social media expert Maddy Montgomery, left standing at the altar, is #StartingOver in small-town Michigan after inheriting her great-aunt’s bakery and a 200-pound English Mastiff named Baby. Her plan to sell the bakery and go back to her sophisticated life is spoiled by a restriction in the will requiring her to spend a year in New Bison. Maddy doesn’t bake, and her Louboutins aren’t made for walking giant dogs, but the locals are friendly, and Lake Michigan is beautiful. Maddy feels ready to take on the challenge—until New Bison’s mayor is fatally stabbed, and her fingerprints are on the knife. When there’s another murder, she even begins to suspect the one person she has trusted. Maddy’s snarky dialog and clever use of hashtags, along with the irresistible Baby, make this a stand-out.

Detroit is a city shaped by social movements. Even in the city’s darkest times of violent uprisings, outmigration, and bankruptcy, ordinary Detroiters remained committed to transformative change - banding together to challenge issues of racial injustice, housing access, food sovereignty, workers’ rights, and accountable governance. A People’s Atlas of Detroit is community-based scholar-activism at its best.

The brilliantly illustrated collection of maps, essays, photographs, poetry, and interviews is the outcome of a multi-year project involving over fifty residents from all walks of life who are at the forefront of local social justice initiatives. Through its combination of radical cartography, historical perspectives, and firsthand reflections, A People’s Atlas elevates the voices of the underrecognized people who are actively charting courses for a more equitable urban future.