100 books like On the Storm/In the Struggle

I love this anthology for its activism, all too necessary now! Poets, both settler and Indigenous, pay tribute to trees through reflections on the past, connections to the present, and calls for the protection of our future. In Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees, celebrated poets and activists pay homage to the ghosts of lost forests and issue a rallying cry to protect remaining ancient giants and restore uncolonized spaces. Themes of connection, ecology, grief, and protection are explored through poems about trees and forests written by an impressive number of influential poets.

Trees are being cleared at a faster rate than any time in history! How can we possibly reverse this? How can poetry raise awareness of the value of our forests, worth more standing? This anthology, in its breadth and scope, offers readers hope, and prompts us to action on behalf of our trees. The anthology features an important introduction by Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of The Global Forest and renowned expert on trees.

This anthology continues my theme of activism through poetry to raise awareness about our threatened environment. With over 100 poems and contributions from poets all over the country, Heartwood is a tribute to and celebration of the timeless impact of nature on Canadian poetry. “We must turn to the poets to expand dreams. This is because trees are the parents to the child deep within us. Forests bear silent witness to the tides of time upon which we… show more.

This anthology is as powerful as it is still necessary: beware. Some pieces may be triggering, but they raised my awareness and empathy. These collected poems from writers across the globe declare one common theme: resistance. By exploring sexual assault and violence in their work, each writer resists the patriarchal systems of power that continue to support a misogynist justice system that supports abusers. In doing so, they reclaim their power and their voice. Resistance underscores the validity of all women’s experiences, and the importance of dignifying such experiences in voice, however that may sound. Because once survivors speak out and disrupt their pain, there is no telling what else they can do.

Voicing Suicide is a collection of poems about suicide and its impact on lives. When my stepdaughter killed herself, I desperately needed an anthology like this. Decades later, the poems here still resonate and console me. The book arises out of a conviction that poetry offers an opportunity to understand some of the difficult aspects of suicide by allowing us to give it voice; through memory, and elegy, through an honest declaration of the draw of death. In poetry, we can enter the spaces suicide shapes around loss and sorrow and give it voice. Poems can speak to the loss of a loved one, to considering suicide, to struggling to make sense of suicide and poems can offer the words of those who have suicided. Although intense and sometimes painful, the book is honest, in moments delicate and tender. It offers an important exploration of suicide by writers who have… show more.

Charles Mills was a giant in contemporary political theory and is perhaps best known for his book The Racial Contract. In his most recent book, Black Rights/White Wrongs, Mills interrogates what he calls “racial liberalism” and the racist underpinnings of modern liberal theory. What I think is most remarkable about this book, though, is its further attempt to reconstruct a “radical liberalism” meant to address issues of racial justice. This book has been a major influence on me in the way I think about and imagine the limits and possibilities of liberalism as a tradition.

This book is a profound reflection on the relationship between Christianity and social justice.

Thurman argues that Jesus was himself a member of an oppressed minority and that his teachings were aimed at empowering the disenfranchised. He goes on to explore the ways in which the African American community can draw on the teachings of Jesus to find strength and hope in the face of systemic injustice.

One of the most striking aspects of the book is the way in which Thurman uses language; his writing is poetic and evocative, and he has a gift for articulating complex ideas in a way that is both accessible and profound. It's no wonder that this book was such an important influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement as a whole.

I contacted Gilbert Moore in 2014 to share how valuable his book Rage was to my perspective as an author writing about the ground-breaking defense in the 1968 “trial of the century”, People v. Newton. Moore covered that headliner for LIFE magazine as its first black reporter. He agreed to be interviewed for our documentary project American Justice on Trial. Tragically, he died before the interview occurred. Watching that extraordinary trial caused Moore to engage in soul-searching, quit his plum job, and write his critically acclaimed book about the epiphany he experienced. Rage is considered a classic in African-American literature – an unparalleled window into the impact of that unprecedented Movement trial on pioneering black professionals in a white supremacist environment – through the eyes and pen of a firsthand observer.   

This is the best book I read in 2023. If you’d asked me if it was possible to write a book entirely in second-person voice and poetic form, I would’ve said it’s impossible. Yet Ani Tuzman has done exactly that and done it with perfection and passion.

Tuzman writes as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, something I personally relate to. Even though she doesn’t shy away from describing intergenerational trauma, her words continually uplift through remembrance of the highest truths.

Mounk’s book is not about mental health per se, but I found that he provided a clear, compassionate framework for understanding the current obsession with identity politics – which, in my experience, relates to our current mental health crisis.

Prioritizing race, gender, and other aspects of identity means that we focus less on universal aspects of the human experience. As a therapist, I know that understanding our suffering from a universal perspective brings healing and transformation. We lose so much when we lose this.

Mounk’s book helped clarify my thinking about identity politics, and I didn’t find it narrow or polemical. 

This book is a bible for people who care about changing the system, rather than just tinkering around the edges.

A soliologist and organiser, Erik Olin Wright manages to map out strategic exits from our exploitative economic, social, and political structures. He pulls together building blocks for a different world, shows them to us, and offers them for us to experiment with. Olin Wright was writing about things like universal basic income way before they were sexy and he writes with both passion and precision.

As someone who’s spent most of my life trying to get closer to the roots of our collective struggles, Olin Wright’s work is a huge support. It’s often difficult to feel like we’re making a difference, like everything’s sliding in the wrong direction no matter what we do.

Envisioning Real Utopias is a solid manual and a vital companion, covered with ink stains and pencil… show more.