100 books like Prayers for the Stolen

The idea to adapt Conrad’s Heart of Darkness came from my teaching of modern world history every semester. Later in that course, I would have students read Achebe’s novel as a foil or answer to Heart of Darkness. The Congolese in Heart are barely people: they have no names, and they are only really described by parts of their bodies.

This book presents the West African world–the communities, the customs, the emotions, the families–that colonialism destroys. While it is easy to be swept away by the story’s momentum in the last two dozen pages, take some time early in the novel to enjoy the world that Achebe lovingly paints. I think it is among the most human expressions of fiction you can read.  

For me Graham Greene is the master of the literary novel of political intrigue, the literary political thriller writer who spans the globe in his narrative reach. It is difficult to focus on only one of his novels, all have influenced, moved, and taught me, but for the purposes of this list I chose The Comedians.

When I discovered Graham Greene decades ago, I started reading his many novels and then rereading them, immersed in his worlds, trying to learn how he did what he did, but of course, what he did was unique to his perspective, experience, and talent.

The Comedians spins out its story in the dangerous landscape of Haiti under the regime of Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute secret police. I still remember the sinister tone and compelling narrative drive of the book on my first reading as the innocent American, the sophisticated returning hotel… show more.

Barbara Kingsolver’s magnum opus follows a Georgia missionary family’s self-destruction in the dark jungles of the Belgian Congo. The story is narrated by the mother and four daughters as the father, Nathan Price, leads his family to a remote village where they live squalid lives.

In a series of misadventures, he is resolute and foolish, attempting to lead the natives to Christ. Through poverty, culture clashes, and even death, the American women learn to depend on the villagers as Nathan blindly attempts to shove them into an Americanized form of Christianity. Kingsolver’s epic is an engrossing study of how destructive blind, stubborn, prejudiced faith can become. It is, at times, heartbreaking and painfully realistic. 

Kingsolver is not afraid to question Christians' motives and show the dark side of Christianity. Yet, she is also respectful of the faith and especially respectful of the African villagers. After reading this story, I found… show more.

This story is set in Sudan among rebel leaders in a war-torn country with hardened guerillas, idealistic aid workers, evangelical young women, and a pilot responsible for bringing aid and people in and out of the area. I was quickly drawn into this complex world through the varied voices and life experiences of the characters, especially as an unlikely and tragic romance emerges.

History, politics, and the human heart are all in play. As a reader I struggled along with the characters as the narrative took on fraught moments of international intrigue and probed the hearts and emotions of the characters, suggesting that in the end, politics is an extension of the human heart in conflict, often in conflict with itself. 

In this book, two journalist brothers reveal how young teens can get wrapped up in the world of transnational gangs.

We follow a young man who watches murder and death all around him and ends up joining a squad of the MS-13 in El Salvador, until his own untimely death. The book brings to life the experience – and unavoidability for poor Salvadorans – of life under gang control. 

Until I read this book, I didn’t realize that my work with criminalized survivors had a rich historical context. One example: I didn’t know about Joan Little, who stabbed the correctional officer who sexually assaulted her with an ice pick, or about the grassroots survivor defense campaign that sprang up around her.

I could not have situated that specific campaign in the broader context of a non-carceral anti-violence movement that opposed the build-up of the criminal response to intimate partner violence (a battle they ultimately lost). Emily Thuma gave me that historical context—and a lot more to be angry about.

This book is bonkers, and I mean that in the best possible way. I loved it when I first read it, and my love for it has only grown throughout the years. I re-read it every few years, trying to pick apart why it works so well for me.

I love Hendrick’s prose, the sharp, noir rhythm of it, and the protagonist, Sherri, is my favorite type of noir heroine to read: crooked but with her own moral code. But mostly, I’m obsessed with how fearless this book is: there’s no taboo left uncrossed. I re-read this book when I need to be braver as a writer.

Valentine handles some very heavy topics beautifully.

Many of the characters are connected by only one thread: they are women trying to survive in West Texas in the early 1970s. It centers around a brutal incident and the quest to find justice for a Mexican teenage girl who was violently assaulted.

Throughout the story we get such an intimate look at these women’s lives. I felt like I knew them. I felt like I was sitting right next to them in their kitchen or on their front porch.

These women were all hardened by the trials life had thrown at them, and were battling the urge to protect themselves with the urge to protect one another. I loved this book because it was just so honest. 

This one is left field as it doesn’t fall neatly into the list. I included this book to avoid the impression that only Indigenous writers can write about Indigenous experiences. It’s important that we do, of course, but this book puts a slightly different slant on the “self-representation” question from an intersectional perspective.

Black feminist writer, Patricia Hill Collins, introduces the concept of intersecting lives and experiences, highlighting common struggles among Indigenous, Black, Minority, and Queer communities and how we are affected by violence in different and shared ways, invisible and public.

I encountered this work during a period of similar oppressions, finding it to be a transformative gift. Patricia’s ideas expand my world to new possibilities beyond institutional thinking. I love how the writing is so accessible, and the pages just fly along. Love this woman!

The late Rabbi Sacks served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. This was one of the last books he wrote before his death. He makes the case that religion is not only the cause of violence but also part of the solution to violence. In each chapter, he deeply analyzes a different religious text and evinces eye-opening interpretations. Perhaps most prescient are his notions of “altruistic evil” and “pathological dualism.” Pathological dualism operates in three ways: first, it dehumanizes and demonizes your enemies; second, it portrays the perpetrator as the victim; and third, it leads the perpetrator to commit altruistic evil—killing others as a perceived favor to humanity. As Sacks so movingly asserts, “When religion turns men into murderers, God weeps.”