7 books like Rebellious Mourning

By Cindy Milstein (editor),

Here are 7 books that Rebellious Mourning fans have personally recommended if you like Rebellious Mourning. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

Camille Sapara Barton Author Of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

From my list on collective grief society and web of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging. 

Camille's book list on collective grief society and web of life

Camille Sapara Barton Why did Camille love this book?

I love this book because it helped me to understand how death-phobic the Western world is and why grief, death, and mourning are currently taboo topics for many. I read the book shortly after the death of a family member, and it helped me to make sense of my feelings and give myself permission to be with them.

I found the book very hard to put down. With poetic wisdom, Stephen Jenkinson outlines how little space there is to consider what a good death is, especially in the context of Western medicine. One of the biggest messages I gained from this book is that we must embrace grief and death in order to embody our ethics and, ultimately, live and die well. 

By Stephen Jenkinson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Die Wise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Die Wise does not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to make dying easier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working with dying people and their families, Stephen Jenkinson places death at the center of the page and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well. Die Wise is for those who will fail…


Book cover of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

Camille Sapara Barton Author Of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

From my list on collective grief society and web of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging. 

Camille's book list on collective grief society and web of life

Camille Sapara Barton Why did Camille love this book?

I love this book because it highlights how interconnected we are with the land and the web of life. As a long-term student of politics, ecology, and health disparities related to colonization, this book is one of the best contributions I have read on the intersections of these topics.

I felt grief and validation while reading this book because it speaks to much of the collective grief I have witnessed. I also found this book deeply inspiring. I am so grateful to have tangible examples of how entangled my health is with the well-being of the land and more than human kin.

I feel this book has provided me with a map or compass as to how to mend relationships with the land and grow more beautiful futures. 

By Rupa Marya, Raj Patel,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'A work of exhilarating scope and relevance ... What a rare and powerful experience to feel a book in your very body' Naomi Klein

'Health is not something we can attain as individuals, for ourselves, hermetically sealed off from the world around us. An injury to one is an injury to all.'

Our bodies, societies and planet are inflamed. In this boldly original book, renowned political economist Raj Patel teams up with physician Rupa Marya to illuminate the hidden relationships between human health and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. In doing so, they offer a radical…


Book cover of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

Laura Boggess Author Of The Honey Field

From my list on transform grief and loss into something beautiful.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a licensed therapist with a master’s degree in clinical psychology, I’ve helped individuals traverse grief and loss for over thirty years. But when my father passed away last year, I found myself feeling untethered, adrift in a barrage of emotions. In grief, I became more affected by even the smallest glimpse of beauty. The poem that perfectly voiced my heart. The spotted fawn appearing on the edge of the lawn. The purple of the eggplant flowering. Grief slowed me down, opening my eyes to the wonder of this achingly beautiful world we live in. It has become part of my story to endeavor to help others do the same. 

Laura's book list on transform grief and loss into something beautiful

Laura Boggess Why did Laura love this book?

I carried this book with me everywhere in the months following my father’s death. It is filled with wisdom and tenderness. This book gave me new language to help explain some of what I was going through, as well as introduce me to some actions/rituals I could try to help heal my hurting heart as I missed my dad. It is a beautiful book.

By Francis Weller,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Wild Edge of Sorrow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"It blew me away. I underlined things on nearly every page." —Anderson Cooper, All There Is

The Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world—and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive.

Introducing the 5 gates of grief, psychotherapist Francis Weller explores how we move through the waters of grief and loss in a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul.

• The first gate recognizes—and invites us to accept—the painful truth that everything we love, we will lose. With this acceptance comes beauty and responsibility—and an…


Book cover of Grievers: Black Dawn Series

Camille Sapara Barton Author Of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

From my list on collective grief society and web of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging. 

Camille's book list on collective grief society and web of life

Camille Sapara Barton Why did Camille love this book?

I adore this book as it feels deeply woven with the legacy of Octavia Butler: gripping, socially engaged science fiction that is full of brilliant information about how to survive societal collapse.

I appreciate how adrienne shines a light on grief as it relates to the various social conditions that create hardship for folks. This systemic lack of care makes it hard for many folks to have their needs met in life, let alone have a dignified death. I gobbled this book up and was very sad to have finished it.  

By adrienne maree brown,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

★ "It’s a strong precedent that will leave readers eager for more."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.

Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following…


Book cover of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Shirin M. Rai Author Of Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring

From my list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic and writer based in the UK. I have always wondered why capitalism claims to know the price of everything but the costs of nothing, unless it gets in the way of increased profit. I have been puzzling over gender inequalities in the political economy of our global society for many years now. This is not only an academic interest but a personal one; the rich buy in the labour of others and the poor get depleted more and faster. I wonder what our world would feel like if this labour of life-making was equally distributed, and valued as it should be.

Shirin's book list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life

Shirin M. Rai Why did Shirin love this book?

A tour de force! This is an amazing book that takes a historical view to explain the story of women’s exclusion from public life and the physical and epistemic violence they experienced through the witch trials in Europe.

I would never have put these two elements together–bringing witch trials into view to help us understand the exclusion of women from the political economy of everyday life. This, Federici argues, led to the restructuring of household relations and the role of women in them, which in turn reflected the changing needs of society with the rise of capitalism.

I found this book illuminating and inspiring as it also tells us about the struggles of women against the shifts in their roles. 

By Silvia Federici,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Caliban and the Witch as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for . . . a new generation of feminists' Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room

A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist…


Book cover of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

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?

As someone of mixed heritage interested in how race, culture, and history intersect differently for different groups of people, I was immediately hooked by Cathy Park Hong’s book. Her examination of the Korean-American experience and all of the privileges and disadvantages of her race and position in society resonated hugely with me. 

But, almost more importantly, I found her essays thought-provoking, funny and wide-ranging. Stand-up comedy? Check. The 1992 LA riots? Check. The Beatles? Check. I’ve reread it multiple times and have recommended it to everyone I know.

By Cathy Park Hong,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY 2021

A New York Times Top Book of 2020

Chosen as a Guardian BOOK OF 2020

A BBC Culture Best Books of 2020

Nominated for Good Reads Books of 2020

One of Time's Must-Read Books of 2020

'Unputdownable ... Hong's razor-sharp, provocative prose will linger long after you put Minor Feelings down' - AnOther, Books You Should Read This Year

'A fearless work of creative non-fiction about racism in cultural pursuits by an award-winning poet and essayist' - Asia House

'Brilliant, penetrating and unforgettable, Minor Feelings is what was missing…


Book cover of Don't Let Me Be Lonely

Joseph Fasano Author Of The Magic Words: Simple Poetry Prompts That Unlock the Creativity in Everyone

From my list on greatest book-length poems of the past 50 years.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a poet and a novelist, I'm fascinated by the places where these two genres meet, undo each other, and create something new again. That sounds a lot like what love can do, and whenever I read a long poem that achieves a unique aesthetic unity, I feel the writer has found a new way to love the world, to love the reader. And, as usual, both the world and the reader are challenged by that love—to grow.

Joseph's book list on greatest book-length poems of the past 50 years

Joseph Fasano Why did Joseph love this book?

Ultimately, this is a work about trauma, both personal and cultural; it is a deeply human testimony to trauma’s power to erase, shape, and reshape the narratives of our lives.

The self, this book implies, is one such narrative, and the forces of contemporary society act in powerful and often surreptitious ways to shape that story.

Rankine is a complete original in her methods of tackling these mysteries, and a reader leaves this book with a sense of having woken, if only a bit more, to the forces that are living our lives for us.

By Claudia Rankine,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Don't Let Me Be Lonely as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A brilliant and unsparing examination of America in the early twenty-first century, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely invents a new genre to confront the particular loneliness and rapacious assault on selfhood that our media have inflicted upon our lives. Fusing the lyric, the essay, and the visual, Rankine negotiates the enduring anxieties of medicated depression, race riots, divisive elections, terrorist attacks, and ongoing wars—doom scrolling through the daily news feeds that keep us glued to our screens and that have come to define our age.

First published in 2004, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is a hauntingly prescient…


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