100 books like Take My Hand

When I read this book as a young lawyer in reproductive rights in the 1990s, it resonated deeply with the daily bias that I witnessed against my clients. Decades later, a highlight of my book tour was being invited to do a talk with Professor Roberts at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Dorothy Roberts’ exploration of “race, reproduction and the meaning of liberty” is powerful.

Her writing clearly lays out how restrictions on abortion, parenting, and access to basic health care are shaped by and also perpetuate American racism. This book inspired me to work for equity and reproductive freedom for all, and hopefully, it will continue to do so for others, too. 

No one writes like Gayl Jones.

Her language, voice, and narrative style make her a singular entity all unto herself. Her first novel, Corregidora, explores the tumultuous life of a blues singer haunted by a dastardly familial trauma. When the novel opens, the protagonist, Ursa Corregidora, has just suffered a horrible accident that renders her unable to have children. 

What happens afterwards is a complex and raw exploration of lineage, darkness, and sexuality. It’s a haunting, relentless book. And it’s not hyperbole to say that it changed the course of black women’s literature.

The rest of us, trying to grapple with the intricacies of race & sex, are simply writing in her wake.

Schwartz’s book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how central black women’s reproduction was to the project of American slavery.

The book illustrates how new doctors needing specialization and clientele found common cause with slaveholders’ needs to control the reproductive capabilities of their enslaved workforce. The ongoing conflicts between slaveholders, enslaved women, and the doctors who were employed to thwart any attempts of resistance and autonomy on their part is truly mind-blowing.

Anyone tracking our current state of affairs post the Dobbs decision, with doctors in states like Texas being forced to choose between providing women necessary healthcare or complying with state law, can see the looming shadow of the history explored in Schwartz’s illuminating book.

This account of Smith’s lauded 35-year career as a midwife in rural Alabama is fascinating.

What I appreciate about this book most is how it maps out the growing tensions that developed between African-American lay midwives and the medical establishment, once the Department of Labor began to regulate midwifery practices in the early twentieth century.

From increased scrutinization and criminalization of folk traditions, like medicinal teas and oil massages, licensed midwives with clinical training found themselves hamstrung by increasing regulation, until they were pushed out of the field altogether in the late 1970s.

The vacuum of maternal healthcare left in their wake has been devastating. Such that, we’re still seeing repercussions to this day. 

This book has so much to teach us about race and misconceptions. Faced with the decision of intervening to save a newborn baby’s life and the orders she’s been given not to touch the child of white supremacists, a NICU nurse, Ruth, hesitates for a moment then provides care. Her hesitation causes her to be charged with a serious crime. She is assigned a white public defender who wants to plead out and keep race out of the equation, but Ruth stands her ground. The women have to learn to trust each other and to find common ground. This is the most beautiful struggle about race from both perspectives that leaves you with a deeper understanding of both sides of the issue. 

I always wanted to be a writer, but after university and a year of traveling and trying to write a book, I went to law school. A fish out of water there, all I did was criminal law. To me, this novel was a beacon. Turow was a criminal lawyer and a novelist—I could do the same one day. 

I loved everything about the book, from the first line to the complex and ambiguous ending. In my first novel, I ended it in the same way. One of the wonderful things about being a published author is meeting writers whose books I’ve read and loved. When I met Turow, we mostly talked about baseball: Cubs versus Blue Jays. (Writers I’ve learned don’t like to talk about writing with each other). What was unspoken but clear was my admiration and thanks for his inspiration. 

Connally is not a lawyer, but he does a great job of accurately portraying the nitty gritty of the practice of street law, where the clients are usually on the lower economic rung of society. Mikey Haller is a lawyer who practices law from the back seat of a Lincoln Town Car, and these are his typical clients. Haller is a likable, memorable character who can sometimes sail close to the wind but has a solid inner moral compass.

In this novel, the first in the series, Haller takes on the defense of a rich playboy type. While he is happy to have a good fee, and it looks like he may, for a change, have an innocent client, things get complicated quickly, and Haller finds himself facing an ethical dilemma. How he resolves the conflict between his professional duty and his individual moral compass is clever and entertaining. And… show more.

I love energetic and creative writing, and Bonfire of the Vanities is a high-voltage novel in both of those regards.

It’s a classic big-city novel set in New York and deals with both ends of the economic spectrum, from the rich world of high finance in Manhattan to the powerless lives of black young men living in the Bronx. One of the best scenes I’ve ever read was when the main character, Sherman McCoy, gets lost in the Bronx driving his BMW and ends up being accosted. It is the match that lights the ensuing story.

This novel by Alabama author Harper Lee is one of my favorite novels. Southern racial prejudice is exposed in the coming-of-age story of the young protagonist awakening to its ugliness and hypocrisy.

The mood is Southern Gothic as the childhood fears of Boo Radley turn out to be unfounded. I love how Lee gives us the perspective of the adult narrator while placing us fully in the world of the children. I love the evoking of childhood fears of the supernatural while learning that the world of living people is much more dangerous.

I consider it a novel that is worth reading every few years.

Remember Presumed Innocent? I remember finding it one of the most astonishing legal thrillers at the time. But the sequel Turow wrote after 23 years is the mother of all sequels.

Judge Rusty Sabich is suspected of murder yet again (wife, this time; it was his mistress in the previous one). Presumably, Rusty’s wife has died of a heart attack induced by one of her own medicines. Rusty is, once again, prosecuted by the same relentless prosecutor, Tommy, who has had a hard-on for Rusty since they were both prosecutors. He believes Rusty got away with murder the last time around. To add to Tommy’s anguish, Rusty hires the same devious and deceitful defense attorney, Sandy Stern.

 If you, like me, think that sequels are never as good, this one will change your opinion too.