10 books like Shunned

I come back to these short essays again and again. The author provides a very powerful way to look at ‘reality’ and question our assumptions about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and what we (or others) ‘should’ do.

This is a poignant and beautifully written book filled with the wisdom and lived experience of the author. Major life transitions (like leaving a religion, job loss, or ending a relationship) throw us into the ‘neutral zone’ that can only be navigated with time and care.

This book by the revered Buddhist teacher was a balm to my soul at a time when I’d left all my previous religious beliefs behind and was searching for ways to think about good and bad, right and wrong. I did not become a Buddhist but here I discovered practical techniques, guided meditations, stories, and other gems of wisdom that eased my journey through the world.

When I first heard about The Artist’s Way, I doubted that this was a book for me. Was I wrong! Over the next year, I met monthly with a visual artist to process each chapter. We discussed prompts, our artist date, or what we wrote from the suggested journaling. The invitations at the end of each chapter led me to work that fed my spirit. Transforming theory into action exercised my creative muscles. The variety of creative engagements encouraged a rich body of work and a new confidence, while the book’s quotes introduced me to other thinkers. Artist’s-Way work not only strengthened my words on the page, but my nonprofit and library work flourished as well. I credit The Artist’s Way for pushing my work into award-winning territory.

The author grows up in the Jehovah’s Witness faith and, along with her husband goes to China as a ‘preacher.’ She is increasingly unhappy with her religion and marriage. While working at a podcast to support herself, she corresponds with an American who challenges her religious beliefs. Deciding to leave the church, she tells her husband she wants a divorce and returns to the US to begin reconstructing her life. To make such a life-altering change while living in a foreign country without any support, even from her husband shows incredible courage. I am amazed at how the desire to leave an oppressive ideology can embolden a person to make nearly unthinkable choices.

Kit and I share some life similarities, she’s a working-class girl with a Birmingham background, published later in life, and I was keen to read her story. Written as scenes from childhood with sharp observation and wit, her book illustrates an unpredictable childhood. The daughter of an Irish mother and Caribbean father in a large and sometimes chaotic family, where there is love in the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but not always at home. There are the familiar places, the family dynamics observed with the clarity of a child, and the tit-for-tat games her parents play - dad buys a new car, the next week, mum a harmonica and Davy Crockett hat. All quirks observed and challenging situations related with a lightness of touch and wit, a genuine pleasure to read.

A. J. Jacobs, a journalist, decides to read the Bible and try to follow it literally for a whole year, to the point of eating locusts, throwing small pebbles at couples he suspects of adultery, slaying idolatry, and speaking the naked truth… Struggling to follow archaic rules, he lives a disconcerting experience under the perplexed eyes of his family and becomes quickly out of step with the present time. The Year of Living Biblically depicts a clash of worlds with a caustic humor and I’ve burst out laughing a couple of times. I recommend it to believers and non-believers, both will be amused by this witty book that gives us food for thought.

It was a brilliant decision on Natalie's part to create a graphic novel that lays out the many facets and layers that make up the dynamics of cults. It has been a pleasure for me to get to know Natalie. A former member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, she is now a dynamic and independent individual. This graphic novel explores a wide variety of aspects of the tactics used by Jehovah's Witnesses, including shunning, the reasons why cult family members will disavow non-cult family members, and a great deal more. This seemed to me to be an excellent option for storytelling geared for minds that have a tendency to gravitate toward visuals.

Readers of my book frequently tell me how surprised they are by Chapter 3, which tells the story of the fearless Egyptian women who took to the streets in 1919 to demand an end to British colonial rule and the establishment of a democratic state. To those readers interested in learning more about Egypt’s female revolutionaries, I happily point to Margot Badran’s pathbreaking scholarship and, in particular, to this book, which explains why feminism and nationalism ran hand-in-hand for so many Egyptian women in the early twentieth century.

As a bomber guy to the core, I approached this book with a silent groan—ugh, another Tom Cruise tale. Was I ever wrong! ‘Forty-Second Boyd’ (maximum time it took him to defeat all challengers) was not only a great fighter pilot, his combat tactic discoveries changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights today. Many consider him the father of the legendary F-15 and F-16 fighters.

Coram’s knowledge and writing style are superb. Boyd was a complicated man; absolutely brilliant with insight and slide rule, a poor father and worse husband—loud, abrasive, and profane. He rarely met a general he couldn’t offend. Despite these drawbacks, Coram skillfully shows how Boyd somehow overcame all professional obstacles, though in the end at great personal cost.