100 books like The Stages of Memory

Joan Didion’s book is heralded for its bravery, clarity, and confessional witness about grief and loss. Indeed, it’s all these things, but for me, more importantly, this book paints a masterful depiction of the loss of innocence that comes when you lose something meaningful—like a loved one.

Particularly, it shows, with exhilarating force, the fragmented sense of time of such an experience, moving from Didion’s darkest moments of despair at the loss of her husband in the present to treasured memories of her life before his passing and musings about what comes now—in the future.

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is for the savoring soul who, like Didion, possesses an inherent human desire for a sense of coherence and wholeness after life has torn it asunder.

Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance tells the story of learning late in life that she was conceived by a sperm donor and that her father was not her biological father. It’s a gripping lyrical memoir about loss of identity the author experiences from learning the truth about her conception.

As a single mom by choice who conceived my son through sperm donation, it illustrated the importance of telling my son the truth about his origins from the beginning, and the need for all modern families who conceive children with donor eggs or sperm to be honest with their children about their conception. 

Maggie Nelson just dazzles me. Her prose is so sharp and thoughtful, her thinking so idiosyncratically brilliant, her images filled with light. The Argonauts is both memoir and inquiry, a story of how Nelson and her partner Harry, who is in the midst of a gender transition, became parents, a story fraught with obstacles and veined with wisdom. Nelson’s voice mixes erudition, visceral power—especially when she writes about sex and the body—and formal innovation. The Argonauts caused a splash when it came out, and for good reason—its unflinchingly honest portrayal of one queer couple’s creation of family together is beautiful, brave, and yes, deeply fierce. 

I really appreciate Alison Landsberg’s focus on the fact that all of us, regardless, of race, gender, or ethnicity, are able to experience empathy for people whose experience is historically different than our own. I find this argument especially important in an era of alarming race essentialism, such as the protest against a painting of Emmett Till because the artist was White.

The September 11th terrorist attack is a difficult history to introduce.

Picture books can be a good way to start the conversation, especially with 8 and 9-year-olds. In This Very Tree, Sean Rubin broaches the topic through a remarkable Callery pear tree in the Twin Towers plaza which survived the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

Rubin’s poignant artwork conveys both the destruction of that terrible day in New York City and the rebuilding efforts afterwards. Informative and lengthy back matter provides more information to complement the brief illustrated text. This picture book leaves the reader with an ultimately hopeful outlook of resilience and renewal. 

An American Muslim is chosen blindly by a jury to design a memorial to the 9/11 victims, opening it up to vociferous debates and dissensions, much like the Ground Zero Mosque controversy.

The author uses her vast experience as a New York Times journalist to eloquently describe the warps and wefts of the fabric of New York society, and starts tugging at several threads as it all unravels. The players’ tug-of-war is well portrayed in rich texture, while the politicians’ intent on not letting a good crisis go to waste adds satirical color to the expansive tapestry.

As a creator, one feels that art has no religion and has no boundaries. The axiom is severely tested in the face of rabid nationalism, parochial intolerance, and a media free-for-all.

The Unfinished Bombing was eerily prescient when first published in 2001 and remains uncannily relevant today.

Linenthal set the standard in his analysis of public tragedy, its impact on an American community and the larger nation, and its memorialization.

In April 1995, a white homegrown right-wing terrorist bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 men, women, and children. Linenthal’s story of the massive crime, outpourings of grief, and the efforts to memorialize the dead and prevent future cataclysms is gripping and personal yet academically astute.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum that rose from the rubble is among the most culturally and aesthetically successful monuments in the history of American public memory. Though seemingly eclipsed by the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001, this story of rupture and recovery, so well told by the author, continues to be critical and instructive.

Controversial Monuments and Memorials was published the year after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, which saw whites rally around the monument to Thomas Jefferson on the University of Virginia campus. This event, and the murders of nine African Americans at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC in 2015, hastened public discord with symbols of the Confederacy and white supremacy. Allison’s book was the first to step into the space where scholars, museum staff, and community activists came together to examine how monuments were used as tools for systemic racism as well as progressive social change. The book is a great resource for those looking to enter the conversation about controversies surrounding monuments and memorials in the United States.

Monument Lab is one book to get your hands on, if you are curious to know how a historic city can remake its traditional monumental history to become more inclusive and reflective of a holistic past and present. The book is about the organization called Monument Lab, which works with communities, artists, and more to reshape the monument culture of Philadelphia. Filled with short essays and colorful photographs, Monument Lab and Monument Lab the book model the democratic turn towards inclusive monument making in an American city.

Monument Wars, like no other book I’ve read, explains the essence of the “monument”—what it is, what it’s supposed to do, and how it does it (or fails to do it)—in the context of American history.

Monuments freeze time and aspire to “closure,” setting heroes or momentous events and their meaning, literally, in stone. But our national lives and history do not stand still, and public memory thus changes with time, often with fraught consequences.

Savage brilliantly examines and illuminates this dissonance, focusing on the most important monumental space in the United States—Washington, D.C., and the National Mall.

Smart, surprising, and accessible, this account of the national capital’s contested terrain offers a vivid case study of how Americans remember, sometimes forget, and increasingly contest their past through sculpture, ceremonial landscape, and the theatrics of the built landscape.