100 books like Better Than Good Hair

I was introduced to this book by a business mastermind which we all read together and discussed chapters on video.

Imagine twenty women from different countries trying to not only understand each other and implement at the same time. I’m not sure what was more entertaining our language barrier or our interpretations. Nevertheless, I was blown away by the amount of structure and stretches that this book presents.

We all agreed to do the stretches as they relate to our lives. One of the many to-do’s was making a list of things that are unfinished and getting to it no matter how big or small. Now I must warn you this is a pretty thick book and I use it as a reference whenever I need a pick-me-up when life seems chaotic.

Mostly I reference the chapters that I feel are in alignment with where I am struggling in day-to-day… show more.

This book gave me the inspiration that I could release the people-pleasing effect and learned to say yes to myself.

This book helped me to examine my belief system of how I approach my self-image and how that affected the people around me including my family and friends.

If you are a creative person, an entrepreneur, a mom, or someone struggling with balancing your life and tend to put yourself last, this book will help you shift your mindset and perspective to show up authentically for yourself first.

Having a list of demands on your neck can feel overwhelming and Shonda shows us how to handle it all from her mishaps all while looking amazingly stunning in the process. For me, it was allowing myself to relinquish control and say yes to the things that light me up.

Shonda’s journey of navigating Hollywood lets us know that we all have… show more.

Now this book was a Christmas gift from my daughter who was 23 at the time. I typically will submit a readers list to my family around the holidays but this one was not on my list believe it or not.

Little did I know that it would become one of my favorite books and here's why. Dean doesn’t sugarcoat his experience around what it takes to get to the next level. He gives you real examples and will challenge you to get out of your comfort zone very similar to Jack Canfield but with a totally different writing style.

The difference between Jack and Dean, in my opinion, is that Dean uses a more personal approach to storytelling so you feel like you are on the journey right along with him the good the bad, and the ugly.

He then goes into detail about the who, what, and why… show more.

If you are anything like me you might have a hard time with your to-do list. Typically I don’t have an issue with doing things that light me up it’s those boring tasks that suck the joy out of your day which then leads to procrastination.

Well, say no more to that notion once you dive into this book. Eat that Frog is a small but powerful book that will help you with productivity. I call this a golden egg because I’ve been able to implement many of his strategies into my everyday life with ease and flow.

The concept of the book is to do the thing that you wouldn’t want to do first and that would be eating the frog. Trust me on this it works and once you get going you might find yourself in a place that is unrecognizable in a good way.

This book is… show more.

I love this book for two reasons. 1. The content: It is so well researched and clearly shows how unequal access to medical care is only part of the reason health levels and outcomes are unequal. We need to consider many other layers, like how medical studies are done, where people live, and what they are exposed to in their physical and social environments. 2. The writing: Villarosa is a genius! She writes so well and compellingly about complex things; I totally get her arguments, even when they deal with academic topics.

Jessica Wilson, an eating disorder dietitian and storyteller, makes the undeniable case for how the diet culture has preyed on and harmed Black women in particular.

I appreciate her excavation of diet culture, revealing how it is rooted in white supremacy and therefore needs to be systematically dismantled through intentional expressions of body love, joyful expression of Black culture, and embracing your food lineage. 

Jim Downs offers an essential corrective to the view of emancipation as a kind of liberal or progressive “triumphalist narrative.” Downs approaches the illness and death that the freed people suffered during and after the Civil War as a major public health crisis. He does not question the historical necessity or the morality of emancipation, but he shows that the disruptions and chaos that attended emancipation—often exacerbated by federal policy—also resulted in immeasurable human suffering and countless deaths. Historians have long recognized that emancipation was a messy affair. But what I find especially compelling is that Downs raises the question of whether the hardship caused by federal emancipation policy was intrinsic to that policy (however unintentional) or incidental—what we might call today “collateral damage.”

This book is an eye-opening, mind-boggling, data-driven analysis of just how skewed society is against those who don’t conform to the standard of pretty. The author, a Stanford law professor, takes a deep dive into how legally ingrained physical discrimination has become, drawing on pertinent examples to illustrate what could, in other hands, be dry reading.

The examples will fire you up – a Reno bartender fired for not wearing makeup, a New Jersey cocktail waitress fired for gaining a dress size, a straight-A student expelled due to a high BMI…none of whom had any legal recourse, as it stands today. The lack of legal protection for appearance bias has clear social and psychological costs, and this book is a great call to arms for change.

This is, to me, the “OG” of Black hair books in the last half-century. I discovered this book by accident a few years ago early one evening and ended up reading late into the night: page by page, Byrd and Tharps provide a first-rate history about natural Black hair. Learning about the hair customs of my ancestors before the onslaught of the Transatlantic Slave Trade made me proud of my curls and strengthened my resolve to continue their brilliant, necessary work on the roots of Black hair.

I was first introduced to Hornbacher’s classic memoir in 2007 by my little sister, who was desperate to help me understand the eating disorder that had plagued her for more than 15 years. The book was—is—a no-holds-barred account of life with an eating disorder, a terrifying narrative of a young woman's gradual and deliberate path towards self-destruction, and it left me in pieces for weeks afterward. And yet, despite the pain it caused, it really did help me understand my sister’s illness better, and in doing so helped reduce the divide that had begun to open between us. Seonaid died in the summer of 2016 after battling anorexia for over 20 years, but even through my grief, I remain grateful to this work for teaching me how to remain strong and patient in the face of this heartbreaking disease.