100 books like Becoming Earth

In this book, W.G. Sebald tells the stories of four Germans who, like the author, left their native land to live abroad. Sebald mixes family memories with stream-of-consciousness musings on history and culture. He inserts unexpected elements into the text, including a found diary written by his Great-Uncle Adelwarth, a gay man who was out of the closet way before it was safe.

Sebald sprinkles into the narrative black and white period photos that have a sort of deadpan, documentary humor that perfectly matches the tone of his prose.

Manuel Puig (1932–1990) was an Argentine novelist best known for writing The Kiss of the Spider Woman, made into a great movie with William Hurt and Raul Julia. This book, my first recommendation, is about a tangled love affair.

Puig tells the story by collaging together letters the characters write to each other, items in advice for the lovelorn columns, obituaries he invented, and a whole host of other texts. The reader has to put all the clues together like a detective solving a mystery. The book is beautifully translated into English by Suzanne Jill Levine. 

André Breton’s book is a patchwork of literary forms, crazy-quilted together to form an amazing image of the world during World War II. At that time, Breton was in exile from Nazi-occupied France, and he visited Quebec in Canada to experience again the comfort and familiarity of being in a French-speaking land.

The book is part poetry and part prose, sometimes a journal, at other times a political meditation, and then a series of stories from mythology and the mystic Tarot. Breton’s ultimate take on living through a world war for the second time is that our daily existence needs to be re-impassioned to prevent violence from becoming the alternative to the mundane. I was fortunate to translate this classic from French to English. 

It is something of a commonplace that the most important subjects in life are somehow the least amenable to the long essay. Where are the great books on love, grace, revelation, understanding, or peace? 

And what about childhood? Everyone has one, and many people want to be parents, but where are the transformative and indispensable books on this subject? Now we have one, at last, this capacious, passionate, searching, learned book, by one of the most gifted prose stylists writing in English in the present day. It’s beautiful to read, and essential for our cultural moment. 

In The Price of Whiteness, historian Eric L. Goldstein documents the uneasy shift in Jewish-American identity throughout American history.

Are Jews a religion or a race or something else entirely? How did Ashkenazi Jews come to be seen as white? Goldstein addresses these questions and others in his rigorously researched book, which touches on topics like Black-Jewish relations, and features a surprisingly profound analysis of Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song.”

At first glance, this doesn't seem to be a book about motherhood, but Vanderah beautifully illustrates how the word “mother” can be more of a verb than a noun. I raced through this story, captivated by the precocious child character, Ursa, and rooting for the accidental guardians who try to protect her. The questions surrounding Ursa’s sudden appearance quickly drew me in, but then the book became so much more than a mystery.

Joanna, the main character, has no biological children but very much becomes a mother to Ursa in the story. I loved the organic, natural way their relationship develops and how they each teach the other to love and trust again. The sweet, inspiring ending made me want to read all of Vanderah’s books.

South African writer Nozizwe Cynthia Jele’s exceptional novel The Ones with Purpose features a family grappling with the death from breast cancer of their oldest sister, eldest daughter, wife, and mother Fikile. The novel depicts caring health professionals who plead with the family to take Fikile home where she can die peacefully, without further intervention. Fikile too begs her loved ones to let her go. But her mother cannot accept that her eldest daughter is dying. Jele’s novel depicts a caring family torn apart by cancer and highlights the importance of making certain that a family’s desperation does not augment the suffering of their dying loved one.

Breast cancer has become ubiquitously one of the most common and dreaded cancers among women. Through this book, the author authentically and innovatively advocates for patients like her, who are diagnosed with breast cancer. She describes her journey in detail in an attempt to guide and advise others on how to deal with and manage life in the face of such a deadly diagnosis. While patients may be overwhelmed by the medical management aspects of the disease, the author reminds us to keep the human and psychological aspects in mind as a patient is after all a human being with emotions at the core.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer I sampled outside information about breast cancer sparingly and this was the only book that made the cut. I dipped into it when I had a question and otherwise left it alone, but afterward I was usually glad I checked to see what Susan Love had to say and appreciated the big picture context that the book offers. If you can afford it, get the most recent edition since it will be the most accurate about treatment plans and ongoing research. 

As a former college writing teacher, Sandra Marinella understands the value of writing one’s story. In The Story You Need to Tell, she recounts her personal journey with breast cancer and tells the stories of others who experienced their own illnesses and traumas. Throughout the book and with the help of writing prompts, Marinella guides and encourages readers to write their stories as an empowering way to heal. She demonstrates how this leads individuals to move toward a better and fuller self as well as to a new, hopeful, and resilient narrative. I recommend this book because it is an excellent guide to writing one’s story, which will eventually become part of that person’s legacy.