89 books like No Two Persons

Okay, so Deep isn’t specifically about women, or scuba diving – it tackles freediving – but includes females and anyone who loves diving in any form should read this book. The meticulous research into the physiology and psychology of human beings underwater is simply fascinating. Nestor ventures off into all kinds of territory, from octopus intelligence; to whales conversing; to humans holding a single breath for an inhuman amount of time.

Freediving is the common theme in the book, but it is far more than that. This is an in-depth study of life beneath the waves from an intriguing perspective.

Alice Carlisle is an intellectual property attorney trainee in London about to secure full-time employment at her firm. But when the head of the department is suspended (the circumstances of which are revealed throughout the story), HR informs Alice that there will be a hiring freeze. Needing money, she takes on a temporary job at her local pub and her boyfriend’s ex moves in to help with the rent. Ouch! I felt so bad for Alice—to work so hard at something and then have it fall apart through no fault of her own. This is a smart, page-turning, relatable read that I devoured in an afternoon, and I loved the message that sometimes a detour takes you right where you need to be.

Liz Murray’s riveting memoir tells of her unlikely rise from homelessness to being accepted to Harvard. It is another classic triumph over adversity story of someone beating the odds. I picked this book because of my own personal experience with homelessness. During the pandemic, my husband and I walked the deserted New York City streets helping to feed the homeless in our neighborhood. This led to the writing of my third book. Like Westover’s story, my book also tells the story of one woman’s rise from living on the streets of New York City to becoming sheltered, employed, and admitted to college. 

Catherine Ryan Hyde does a masterful job of showing us the stark reality of teen homelessness through the eyes of Jordy and Chloe. The content of the first few chapters was hard for me to read because of what young people must do to survive on the street and what traumas lead them there in the first place. As the story unfolded, though, Hyde took me on a warm and loving journey as Jordy set out to show Chloe that there truly is a lot of beauty in the world. 

Sixteen-year-old Dylan has lost everything. His mother has thrown him out of their house and he’s forced to live on the streets, begging for handouts and avoiding the thugs that threaten him daily. During my work as a literacy mentor, one of the teachers I supported taught a particularly challenging group with a ringleader (I’ll call him Sean) who frequently interrupted lessons with unruly outbursts. I suggested that the teacher try ending his lessons ten minutes early and reading a few pages of Theories of Relativity as a reward when the group performed well. A week later when I came to observe the teacher’s practice, Sean stopped me before class and demanded, “Have you read Theories of Relativity?” I pretended I hadn’t and he breathlessly summarized the story they’d heard so far. And during the lesson, he shushed anyone whose behaviour might have interfered with that day’s reading, which… show more.

“Middle-class academic writes nonfiction about homeless substance abuser” – that sounds like a recipe for overweening earnestness at best, or at worst an exploitative catastrophe. But right from the first line of this astonishing book you know that the author isn’t entirely in control, that the subject, his troubled friend Stuart Shorter, has agency in these pages in a way he seldom did elsewhere in life. It’s a gut-crunchingly sad story, but also often very funny – which, you get the feeling, is exactly how Stuart would have wanted it.

This book is the first to finally put to rest the blame-the-victim causal explanations for homelessness. Using economic and geographic data, Colburn and Aldern show that homelessness is the result of poverty, but not only poverty; for example, Detroit has low rates of homelessness.

Essential is the existence of economic inequities combined with the unavailability of affordable housing, for example, in New York City. This book makes my teaching about homelessness so much easier.

Abby, like most high school girls, wants to be liked, have friends, go to dances, and dress in the latest fashions. The only difference between her and everyone else is she and her family are homeless and living in her mom's van, and Abby doesn't want anyone to know. Tension builds as the weather gets colder in Minnesota and Abby fears being found out. The author touches on many current issues through a delightful cast of characters, showing just how resourceful teenagers can be and how difficult situations can make you stronger.  

Learning to Breathe tells such an important side of the #MeToo Movement, with sixteen-year-old Indira (Indy), a Black Bahamian girl who struggles to find her place in the aftermath of an assault that leads to an unwanted pregnancy. Set in the Bahamas, a place so often portrayed in Western culture as idyllic, it depicts a very different gritty and authentic lived reality for the main character. This heart-rending, yet empowering novel is enlightening on so many levels. Not only does it offer the unique and all-too-often overlooked point of view of a young person of color, but it also deals with complex family issues, homelessness, and a young woman’s path to claiming power over her own body and future. 

This book is admittedly old (published in 2003), but I find myself returning to it time and again as an important touchstone to understanding the origins and consequences of homelessness in America. Hopper is an anthropologist and activist, one of the first to study the ‘new’ epidemic of homelessness that appeared in the 1980s in cities like New York.

Hopper’s book traces the historical roots and consequences of the epidemic and is prescient in foretelling points of contention, such as the African-American racism underlying housing precarity. Far from the stilted reporting style of academic reporting, this book reads like a conversation and an invitation to learn more.