98 books like Minor Feelings

By Cathy Park Hong,

Here are 98 books that Minor Feelings fans have personally recommended if you like Minor Feelings. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Book cover of The Living Mountain

Sara B. Franklin Author Of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America

From my list on the stories we tell about women.

Why am I passionate about this?

Judith Jones became an important mentor and mother figure to me in my twenties, in the wake of my parents’ deaths. Her personal wisdom and guidance, which I received both in knowing her personally and from the incredible archive she left behind, have been invaluable to me during a particularly tumultuous and transformative decade in my own life. I wrote The Editor as I was coming into my full adulthood, and the books on this list helped shape my thinking along the way at times when I felt stagnant or stuck or needed to rethink both how to write Judith’s life and why her story is so vital to tell.

Sara's book list on the stories we tell about women

Sara B. Franklin Why did Sara love this book?

I’ve never read anything like The Living Mountain. A book that is, at once, an autobiography of a remarkable yet under-celebrated woman writer and an exploration of the ecstasies of experiencing the world through the body and its senses.

In gorgeously vivid prose, Shepherd invites us to pursue depth over breadth and to rely upon our felt experience as a way of knowing in the world. This book challenges dominant “hero’s journey” narratives in both content and form and suggests that all we yearn to experience and know can be found right where we find ourselves, wherever that may be. 

By Nan Shepherd,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Living Mountain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian

Introduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette Winterson

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and…


Book cover of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Emma Ling Sidnam Author Of Backwaters

From my list on Asian identity and heritage.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander who always felt ‘other’ growing up. When I was little, I hated being asked ‘where are you from?’ because I wanted to be seen as ‘just’ a New Zealander. This frustration shaped a lot of my race and identity journey, and I started reading books about other people’s personal experiences because it made me feel seen. These books also helped me recognize the richness and humanity behind my family’s story. I hope this beautiful list of books will resonate with your experiences or give you insight into a new corner of the world. 

Emma's book list on Asian identity and heritage

Emma Ling Sidnam Why did Emma love this book?

Ocean Vuong writes in a poetic prose that transforms memories into fragments that linger in your mind. His choice to write this book as fictionalized letters to his mother was deeply beautiful and heart-wrenching. This is a book that took me on a journey through the Vietnam War, my first queer experiences, and the journey of finding out what it means to become American.

By Ocean Vuong,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An instant New York Times Bestseller!

Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award

Shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction!

Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more.

"A lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently…


Book cover of Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Sara B. Franklin Author Of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America

From my list on the stories we tell about women.

Why am I passionate about this?

Judith Jones became an important mentor and mother figure to me in my twenties, in the wake of my parents’ deaths. Her personal wisdom and guidance, which I received both in knowing her personally and from the incredible archive she left behind, have been invaluable to me during a particularly tumultuous and transformative decade in my own life. I wrote The Editor as I was coming into my full adulthood, and the books on this list helped shape my thinking along the way at times when I felt stagnant or stuck or needed to rethink both how to write Judith’s life and why her story is so vital to tell.

Sara's book list on the stories we tell about women

Sara B. Franklin Why did Sara love this book?

Lorde’s landmark collection of essays amplifies ways of living and knowing long familiar to women and other marginalized groups. Her exploration of eroticism—a fully vivacious, embodied experience of life—as a source of women’s knowledge, wisdom, and power is yet unmatched in American letters.

Essential reading for anyone who has felt unsatisfied or unseen by the narratives handed down by the white, heteronormative, patriarchal powers that continue to hold our imaginations in a vice grip. 


By Audre Lorde,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Sister Outsider as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep

The revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women'. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches, letters, interviews - explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship, the erotic and the need for female solidarity, and includes her landmark piece 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House'.

'The truth of her writing is as necessary today as…


Book cover of In the Dream House: A Memoir

N. S. Nuseibeh Author Of Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman

From my list on nonfiction about lots of things at once.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I’m an academic by training, I secretly struggle with heavy nonfiction tomes (think: massive histories of long-ago countries). I start reading these with the best intentions but quickly get sleepy, bored, or both, setting them aside and instead picking up a novel, which I’ll immediately devour. That’s why I love memoiristic, hybrid work so much: writing that pairs the intimacy of fiction with the information buffet of nonfiction, where you learn without realizing you’re learning. These books feel like a conversation with a close friend who is intelligent, thought-provoking, and passionate about various subjects—what could be better than that?

N.'s book list on nonfiction about lots of things at once

N. S. Nuseibeh Why did N. love this book?

Although this book is about so, so much more, the premise itself pulled me in—I mean, a memoir about an abusive lesbian relationship? Yes, please.

But of course, Carmen Maria Machado, with her incredibly lyrical prose and frighteningly sharp intellect, takes the memoir form and turns it into something unique and surprising, a reflection on her relationship that somehow involves cultural history, film, fairy-tales and even—I kid you not—Disney’s The Little Mermaid. I was so moved and learned so much that I read it twice within a month.

By Carmen Maria Machado,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked In the Dream House as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Ravishingly beautiful' Observer
'Excruciatingly honest and yet vibrantly creative' Irish Times
'Provocative and rich' Economist
'Daring, chilling, and unlike anything else you've ever read' Esquire
'An absolute must-read' Stylist

WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse.

Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and…


Book cover of The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

N. S. Nuseibeh Author Of Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman

From my list on nonfiction about lots of things at once.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I’m an academic by training, I secretly struggle with heavy nonfiction tomes (think: massive histories of long-ago countries). I start reading these with the best intentions but quickly get sleepy, bored, or both, setting them aside and instead picking up a novel, which I’ll immediately devour. That’s why I love memoiristic, hybrid work so much: writing that pairs the intimacy of fiction with the information buffet of nonfiction, where you learn without realizing you’re learning. These books feel like a conversation with a close friend who is intelligent, thought-provoking, and passionate about various subjects—what could be better than that?

N.'s book list on nonfiction about lots of things at once

N. S. Nuseibeh Why did N. love this book?

I read Olivia Laing’s book at the height of my own loneliness: isolated, in lockdown, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part memoir, part art history, part cultural criticism, the book managed to be both intimate and expansive—just what I needed as I sat by myself in front of a computer, anxiously refreshing virus graphs.

I became absorbed by the lives of Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz, artists I’d heard of but knew nothing about, and by the various aspects of loneliness I’d never previously considered. It’s the perfect example of the type of hybrid writing that I find truly magical.

By Olivia Laing,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Lonely City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism

#1 Book of the Year from Brain Pickings

Named a best book of the year by NPR, Newsweek, Slate, Pop Sugar, Marie Claire, Elle, Publishers Weekly, and Lit Hub

A dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism on the subject of loneliness, told through the lives of iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring.

When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by the most shameful of experiences, she began…


Book cover of Afterparties: Stories

Vichet Chum Author Of Kween

From my list on to feel alive, awesome and Asian American.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Cambodian American/Asian American writer who is always concerned/interested/curious by the landscape of our diasporic stories. There is incredible diversity here… in the ways Asian Americanness can look, sound, and feel like a myriad of things. These books aren’t instructed or tethered by gaze but rather born and smartly crafted by unique souls that run deep. These authors and their stories are my heroes. I hope you enjoy these picks as much as I do!

Vichet's book list on to feel alive, awesome and Asian American

Vichet Chum Why did Vichet love this book?

Someone asked me recently when the last time was I felt truly represented in art or media, and I told them it was when I read this book.

Afterparties is a series of short stories about Cambodians around the country… and it gets it so absolutely, hilariously right. The characters are vivid, extraordinary in their ordinariness, and familiar not just to Khmer people, but to anyone who belongs to a community.

Its tone is a high wire act… sardonic, morbid, and always so affectionate and loving to its subjects.

By Anthony Veasna So,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Afterparties as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE JOHN LEONARD PRIZE AT THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS AND THE FERRO-GRUMLEY AWARD FOR LGBTQ FICTION
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'So's distinctive voice is ever-present: mellifluous, streetwise and slightly brash, at once cynical and bighearted...unique and quintessential' Sunday Times

'So's stories reimagine and reanimate the Central Valley, in the way that the polyglot stories in Bryan Washington's collection Lot reimagined Houston and Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous allowed us to see Hartford in a fresh light.' Dwight Garner, New York Times

'[A] remarkable debut collection' Hua Hsu, The New Yorker

A Roxane…


Book cover of My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

Sara B. Franklin Author Of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America

From my list on the stories we tell about women.

Why am I passionate about this?

Judith Jones became an important mentor and mother figure to me in my twenties, in the wake of my parents’ deaths. Her personal wisdom and guidance, which I received both in knowing her personally and from the incredible archive she left behind, have been invaluable to me during a particularly tumultuous and transformative decade in my own life. I wrote The Editor as I was coming into my full adulthood, and the books on this list helped shape my thinking along the way at times when I felt stagnant or stuck or needed to rethink both how to write Judith’s life and why her story is so vital to tell.

Sara's book list on the stories we tell about women

Sara B. Franklin Why did Sara love this book?

This book fundamentally reshaped my notion of how biography–especially biographies of women–can be written. Shapland felt intimately connected to McCullers as a person and as a writer and also had an inkling there was more to her personhood than previous biographical treatments suggest.

By inhabiting McCullers’s spaces and putting herself in proximity to the writer’s material past, Shapland demonstrates the ways in which convention has limited both the stories we tell and, thus, the possibilities we can envision for our lives as women. 

By Jenn Shapland,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked My Autobiography of Carson McCullers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, and a Lambda Literary Award


Finalist for the National Book Award


Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction


How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered—an icon and idol—alongside your own? Jenn Shapland’s celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America’s most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love.


Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a…


Book cover of Stay True: A Memoir

Lio Min Author Of Beating Heart Baby

From my list on the transformative power of art.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m only a writer because I was a musician first. I worshiped music—as a performer, listener, and later a critic—for its ability to enshrine me in a purely emotional world. My favorite lyrics were poetry in motion; my favorite melodies escaped description. And through sharing my feverish acclamations of particular albums and songs, I found community with others who also pledged themselves to art that’d definitively split their lives into “before” and “after.” My writing career was born from cathartic devotion and remains devoted to recounting the rapture of self-formation, of being reflected in the mirror of something that saw you before you even knew to see yourself.

Lio's book list on the transformative power of art

Lio Min Why did Lio love this book?

I was so moved by Hua Hsu’s memoir, an elegy to a college best friend whose shocking murder forever haunts him, because it spoke to a certain kind of young friendship. One of the things that bound Hsu to Ken was the art they did (and didn’t) like but which they always talked about.

I was reminded of the chance encounters of my most important friendships—the Sunday nights spent watching Mad Men in a dorm room or the hours spent swapping Photoshop edits of anime characters—and transported back to those days of limitless dreaming. How big the world seemed then, and how much art we were so desperate to make for, and about, each other.

By Hua Hsu,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Stay True as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu

“This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose…


Book cover of Ma and Me: A Memoir

Vichet Chum Author Of Kween

From my list on to feel alive, awesome and Asian American.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Cambodian American/Asian American writer who is always concerned/interested/curious by the landscape of our diasporic stories. There is incredible diversity here… in the ways Asian Americanness can look, sound, and feel like a myriad of things. These books aren’t instructed or tethered by gaze but rather born and smartly crafted by unique souls that run deep. These authors and their stories are my heroes. I hope you enjoy these picks as much as I do!

Vichet's book list on to feel alive, awesome and Asian American

Vichet Chum Why did Vichet love this book?

This book sits at the center of my heart. It is personal, vulnerable, and incredibly moving.

It follows Pustata’s relationship with her mother who struggles to acknowledge her daughter’s queer identity. As children of survivors, it’s about the boundaries we must articulate to survive ourselves and the hope we must keep in the secret parts to leave space for transformation.

Her sensitivity and strength are always in conversation with each other and always equally felt.

By Putsata Reang,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ma and Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain's orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. "I had hope, just a little, you were still alive," Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.

Over the years, Put lived…


Book cover of The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

Sara B. Franklin Author Of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America

From my list on the stories we tell about women.

Why am I passionate about this?

Judith Jones became an important mentor and mother figure to me in my twenties, in the wake of my parents’ deaths. Her personal wisdom and guidance, which I received both in knowing her personally and from the incredible archive she left behind, have been invaluable to me during a particularly tumultuous and transformative decade in my own life. I wrote The Editor as I was coming into my full adulthood, and the books on this list helped shape my thinking along the way at times when I felt stagnant or stuck or needed to rethink both how to write Judith’s life and why her story is so vital to tell.

Sara's book list on the stories we tell about women

Sara B. Franklin Why did Sara love this book?

At a moment when I was stuck in the long process of writing my book–newly divorced, overwhelmed by solo parenting young twins, and exhausted by pandemic shutdowns–this book reinvigorated me as a writer and mother. Phillips artfully demonstrates not only that motherhood and creative lives aren’t mutually exclusive, as the common trope would suggest, but that there are infinite paths to combining the two. 

By Julie Phillips,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Baby on the Fire Escape as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own" but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.

With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, who had to choose between her motherhood and herself; Ursula K. Le Guin, who found productive stability in family life; Audre Lorde, whose queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Asian Americans, The Beatles, and stand-up comedy?

Asian Americans 28 books
The Beatles 56 books
Stand-Up Comedy 12 books