Help! I need something to read!
Dear s.e.,
I'm looking for some books on grief that are more about social and cultural analysis, rather than how-to guides (especially the ones full of glib platitudes that I really can't relate to). Do you have any suggestions?
—This Question is Not an Obvious Plant
Hello Obvious Plant!
How fortuitous that you should happen to write in with this question the week my book All My Dead Cats and Other Losses: Practicing Good Grief in a Culture That Fears Mourning comes out. I do have some recommendations for you (including some that aren't by me)—FYI, these are Bookshop.org affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission on anything you order.
All My Dead Cats and Other Losses: Practicing Good Grief in a Culture That Fears Mourning
I've been actively working on this book for six years, but its roots are far deeper: I believe that mourning should be a collective praxis and project, that if we want to liberate ourselves, we must do this work together. I also challenge the belief that grief is something to be fixed and moved past, rather than lived with and carried, exploring why some forms of grief are pathologized, who society allows to mourn, and how to break out of this horrible cycle of silence and suffering that capitalism has sentenced us to.
Order All My Dead Cats from Bookshop.org
You can read coverage of All My Dead Cats at Prism, Longreads, Booklist, and Bookpage.
Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, edited by Cindy Milstein
This is an outstanding anthology about grief, treating it as a deeply collective social and cultural project. It explores moments of shared grief, grief as a political experience, and the way capitalism ruins everything it touches. The anthology format is perfect for this one; each essay surfaces a new experience, point of view, line of thinking, and way of viewing the world. It's also one you can read in chunks or dip in and out of if you're a person who likes to savor a book sometimes rather than going straight for a cover-to-cover read.
Order Rebellious Mourning from Bookshop.org
Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End, Alua Arthur
A fantastic memoir, and cultural commentary, from doula Alua Arthur of Going With Grace. This is a fantastic read that invites readers to embrace end-of-life conversations and connect with one another. Her writing voice is warm and so conversational that it feels like spending time with a friend. She explores the spiritual side of death but also anchors the work in practicality, too; it definitely encourages the reader to start talking about death in general, and also what they want, with friends and family.
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From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire, Sarah Jaffe
Sarah's body of work on grief, loss, and capitalism is incredible. From the Ashes weaves memoir about her father's death with a larger step back to look at how we grieve, making the case for public memorialization, not private suffering. She also explicitly presents grief as a political experience and explores the societal injustices that profoundly affect our experience of grief. This is also a book that talks about non-death losses and how we reckon (or don't) with a loss that doesn't necessary involve a dead body.
Order From the Ashes from Bookshop.org
Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Judith Butler
Butler is an incredible scholar and their work on grief is fantastic; Precarious Life makes an urgent case for finding solidarity with each other, and using that solidarity in pursuit of liberation. It challenges the extremely U.S. ideology of using grief as a catalyst for vengeance and war, contributing to an endless cycle of violence and suffering that inflicts psychic damage on all of us.
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Faithful Unto Death: Pet Cemeteries, Animal Graves, and Eternal Devotion, Paul Koudounaris
I am a huge fan of Paul's work, especially the care, respect, and love he shows for his animal companions, and his cultural analysis of larger social attitudes about the creatures we share our lives with. His Instagram also chronicles his ongoing project to give animals killed by drivers or left to die dignity in death, with beautiful portraits and thoughtful notes—he may only have known them posthumously, but he feels deeply for them. The photography in this book is stunning, and so is the writing and research that goes along with it.
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The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability, Jasbir K. Puar
The Right to Maim discusses disability, debility, death, whose bodies are marked for destruction, and whose are of value. It's essential reading for anyone who wants a deeper cultural understanding of death and our own complicity. It will make pop rocks go off in your head with thoughtful and critical analysis that is also challenging and provocative. Puar's decolonial lens is such an important and underrepresented element of death conversations, and this is a book you will want to take your time with.
Order The Right to Maim from Bookshop.org
American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the 21st Century, Shannon Dowdy
This is part travelogue, part reporting, part commentary, looking at how death is changing in the U.S., whether we're talking about alternative disposition, home funerals, or accompanying dying people in their final days. We're seeing some profound culture shift in the U.S. as we take on death conversations. In a way, this is an update to The American Way of Death, presenting a much brighter future for us than Mitford did, one in which death is honored, shared, and taken far beyond the funeral director's office.
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All the Living and the Dead, Hayley Campbell
I'm a big enthusiast in interacting with bodies, taking the time to sit with them, handle them, and dispel fears around death; it is a profound sadness to see the body removed from so many memorials, celebrations of life, and other such events. This book profiles the people who make handling bodies their life's work, with some very colorful characters and thoughtful critical analysis.