Fans pick 100 books like Becoming Unbecoming

I haven’t recovered yet from the way Hartman recovers the lives of young Black women through historical photographs. The images were made to rob these women of their individuality, make them fit “types,” letting them say Nothing about themselves.

But Hartman writes like she’s talking to them, and they’re wonderful. She messes with categories used by authorities who thought they “knew” these women by their transgressions. I was utterly transfixed by how she imagined these women’s lives and loves in the ordinary stairways and back alleys they called home.

The photos are gorgeous. You could talk about them for days and still have more to think about—like how when it comes to women being framed for doing something wrong, maybe Nothing has changed.

You have probably seen the film version starring Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan—which I also highly recommend! But Sixsmith’s original book demonstrates how an experienced yet disenchanted writer can find their own way, and make an international impact, by helping another person discover the hideous truth.

Philomena Lee was a woman from Roscrea, Ireland, who, after fifty years, could no longer endure the torment of not knowing what had happened to her toddler son, taken from her at a Catholic home for unwed mothers and sold to an American couple. Unbeknownst to Philomena, her son later went searching for her.

Sixsmith blends these two histories together in a story with many political and personal layers, including only an occasional, seamless glimpse of his amazing research process.

I have admired Wideman for many years. As a writer, he is a virtuoso in multiple forms, making room to confront violence and racism without offering readers trite or false resolutions.

I appreciate how he keeps calling back to the themes and subjects of earlier work. His essay, “Looking at Emmett Till” (originally published in Issue 19 of Creative Nonfiction), grappled with his recollections of 1955 as a 14-year-old teenager, the same age as Emmett Till when he was lynched and murdered.

Writing to Save a Life builds upon this work, tracing a parallel history of Till’s father, Louis, and Wideman’s journey to confront official documents of Louis’s prosecution and hanging during his service in World War II. Here as in so much of his writing, Wideman chooses a unique structure for the book, braiding his own reflections on injustice into the documentary material. 

OK, so Marcel Marceau was totally famous as a French mime artist, and his history has not been exactly “lost.” But I was intrigued by the idea of a biography that focuses on someone who was known for performing through silence, mastering silence itself as an art of communication.

Every page in Wen’s book is a surprise! First, she creates an impressionistic rather than traditional biography. There are source notes at the end, like a usual work of nonfiction, but her book fits easily in the palm of your hand and resembles a collection of poems more than the usual biographical tome.

Each segment invites a re-reading, a back and forth, that evokes the ever-kinetic and elusive interplay of Marceau’s living art. “Videos and photographs remind you how transient the stage is,” Wen writes, taking on Marceau’s persona at one point. “So you replay the dancing ghost in your head… show more.

Tsuge is another of the early gekiga greats, who only recently allowed English translation of his classic work from the 1960s and 70s. Tsuge pushed the boundaries of what manga stories were about, into more abstract and surreal areas and visual presentation. This book is, like Tatsumi’s books, a glimpse of a little-known Japan beneath the common stereotypes. Its stories are told in an understated and sophisticated fashion. Literary manga indeed. Wonderful stuff, personally I love it.

This is the stunning opening salvo of John Lewis’ brilliant trilogy tracking his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights. We follow Lewis’ upbringing in rural Alabama during which young John honed his preaching skills before an audience of barnyard chickens, his transformative meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement. In shedding light on our country’s racist history, Lewis rakes you raw, holds no punches, and yet offers hope. 

Amy’s book takes on the same topic, but from the perspective of an academic—and with a more balanced, objective approach. In particular, she examines the role of anti-comics crusader Dr. Fredric Wertham, arguing that his “role in the crusade against comics has been largely misinterpreted by fans and scholars alike, who dismiss his findings as naïve social science, failing to understand how his work on comic books fits into the larger context of his beliefs about violence, psychiatry, and social reform." 

A graphic novel about superhero pets? Yes, please! This is a super fun book (see what I did there?) perfect for young readers. Crime-stopping superhero, Captain Amazing is getting older. He’s starting to think it may be time to bring in a sidekick— his pets think they can help. With hilarious twists and turns - this wonderfully illustrated book is both heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny. 

Katzenstein cleverly uses cartoons to take us into the brain of someone with OCD. This book is laugh-out-loud funny, but also highly educational. I love this book because it uses cartoons to present another way of understanding each other – in its drawings, it’s deeply empathetic. While I don’t have OCD, I do struggle with the feeling that words alone are not enough to convey to others what’s going on inside my brain, and this book made me feel less alone.

One of the most meditative books I’ve ever experienced. I read this for the first time on an airplane and it felt like having a lucid dream. It’s an entirely wordless graphic novel documenting all the details and experienced moments of a train ride, from finding a seat, to the patterns of rain on the windows and the passing landscapes, all rendered in highly stylized but clear line work. This book left me wanting to notice and appreciate my own movement through the physical spaces of my daily life. I recommend anything you can find by Yokoyama, but this one feels especially important to me.