Tell Me What You’re Reading No. 23: Uli Beutter Cohen: Books that deal with identity and how to find your place in the world
Uli Beutter Cohen, founder of Subway Book Review (@subwaybookreview) discusses her enthusiasm for five books that she has recently read and that she recommends and that she described as “books that deal with identity and how to find your place in the world”.
These are the essay collection of Korean American artist and activist Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel); the striking anti-patriarchal manifesto “with enough rage to fuel a rocket” written by Egyptian American activist Mona Eltahawy (The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls); the semi-autobiographical novel of Vietnamese-American writer Ocean Vuong (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous); author and illustrator Erin Williams’ “intimate, clever, and ultimately gut-wrenching graphic memoir about the daily decision women must make between being sexualized or being invisible” (COMMUTE - An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame) and Teen Vogue award-winning columnist; and author of the “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America” op ed, Lauren Duca’s how to book (How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics).
Uli also discussed Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life (“one of the best books on writing”), by Anne Lamott, and also Devotion: Why I Write, by Patti Smith.
WHAT ULI IS READING
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
Reviews The New York Times | The Washington Post | NPR
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy
Reviews Kirkus Review The New York Times - Opinion
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Reviews The New York Times | The New Yorker | NPR
COMMUTE - An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame by Erin Williams
Reviews The Guardian | Kirkus Review
How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics, by Lauren Duca
Reviews The Nation | Amazon
WHAT HOWARD IS READING
World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made, Irving Howe
Reviews The New York Times | Commentary | The New York Review of Books
