Books I Read (and Loved) in Summer 2023
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Although I didn’t hit a “reading slump” this summer—far from it—I read in big, fast chunks with long lulls in between. Rather than do monthly posts for the last three months with just one or two books each, I opted to combine them all into one big summer post, both for the sake of simplicity and to provide as many book blurbs as possible for these strange, hot, nebulous months.
Summer was weird for me. I started it in recovery from my hysterectomy, spent a week in the hospital for persistent pelvic pain likely due to (small) ovarian cysts, played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for hours, and spent as much time with my partners and cats as possible. There were days I simply napped on and off, ice packed into the pain spots, wanting to read but unable to keep my eyes open for more than a page or two.
Through all of that, these books in particular hit me hard and have stayed with me.
The Cancer Journals
Audre Lorde’s searing memoir of her breast cancer diagnosis, mastectomy, and ensuing difficulty conforming to the expectation that she wear a prosthetic when she would rather freely walk around with one breast is both a stunning example of how feminism has failed Black women and a sharp commentary on illness and the culture of conformist wellness.
Care Work
A major text in the disability justice studies canon, Care Work is an examination of disabled and chronically ill interdependence and how we can better show up for and support each other by using our strengths to bolster each other’s weaknesses. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha also explores the importance of and variation in care networks, daily changes that can make massive impacts, and ways in which everyone—regardless of ability level or wellness—can help create a truly disabled-inclusive future.
Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner has a complicated relationship with her mother, and that only increases when she flies home unexpectedly to take care of her mother during high-impact cancer treatment. Through all of the hardships of that experience, Zauner holds onto the hope that her mother will survive and live much longer on the other side. When the treatment doesn’t work and her mother refuses to go through an additional round, Zauner is forced to reckon with her relationships with both parents, her sense of self, her sense of obligation, and what the future looks like when her closest remaining ties to her mother are through food, history, and culture she’s distanced herself from through adulthood.
This book is beautiful and heartbreaking and worth every minute. It’s also impossible to put down.
I’m Afraid of Men
I’m a longtime fan of Vivek Shraya’s music, and her prose is as impactful as her lyrics. Here, she explores gender and trauma through the lenses of forced masculinity and hyper-critical femininity, including how the gender binary has affected her most intimate relationships. This isn’t an easy read, but there’s also liberation in Shraya’s words and a sense of freedom that’s at once cathartic and fragile.
The Late Americans
Read for The Nonbinarian Book Club, this contemporary examination of a friend group in their senior year at a rural university is as illuminating as it is complex. None of the characters are particularly likeable and each point of view introduces new, unreliable information that ultimately culminates in a group trip to someone’s lake house where grace is plentiful, but secrets still do harm. The prose is gorgeous and the flow of the overall story demonstrates Brandon Taylor’s mastery of his craft.
Quietly Hostile
Read for The Nonbinarian Book Club, Samantha Irby’s latest essay collection continues to examine her life as a fat, Black, queer, disabled woman whose stardom has shifted as her personal life has begun to settle down. At turns hilarious and horrifying, these essays are striking for Irby’s iconic timing and turn of phrase. The audiobook narrated by the author is an especially intimate experience, and I highly recommend grabbing it from Libro.fm if that’s your thing.
Thistlefoot
Isaac and Bellatine Yaga have unique powers passed down through their family line, but where Isaac embraces his shapeshifting, Bellatine runs from what she calls “the embering.” When their ancestral home is unexpectedly delivered to a port in the US from Kyiv, they’re forced to go on the run as they’re hunted by one of the scariest, most sinister villains I’ve ever encountered in fiction. Based on Slavic and Jewish folklore, this sharply-written, incredibly descriptive, and thrilling book breathes new life into a classic story and introduces characters you won’t soon forget.
“You Just Need to Lose Weight”
Aubrey Gordon is a preeminent fat liberation author and her work always resonates with me. It also teaches me, which allows me to continue my own education and outreach in this arena. Written in plain text with scholarly and anecdotal research, Gordon breaks down 20 of the most damaging myths of diet culture and explores how we can create a truly fat liberationist future.
Water I Won’t Touch
I read this collection for a queer poetry book club run by Kay E. Bancroft. In its examination of transness and trauma, it explores human bodies and the Earth, ultimately envisioning a future of queer joy where the author has escaped from addiction and familial harm. My 5-star review: “I feel like every single word resonated, even in passages where my experiences are totally different from the author’s. Gorgeous verse, excellent use of repetition and theming. Intimate. Lovely. “
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