Ten Great Nonfiction Titles to Read in May
May 2024 brings a diverse selection of nonfiction, including memoirs on grief, identity, and disability, as well as critical examinations of money and corporate management. Works by Chet’la Sebree, Siri Hustvedt, and Sara Nović explore personal and cultural themes through innovative narrative forms. Meanwhile, books by Alan Mikhail, Henry Snow, and others delve into historical and systemic issues, from early American life to the mechanics of economic control.
- ▪Chet’la Sebree's 'Turn Where: A Geography of Home' blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to explore the search for belonging as a Black woman in America.
- ▪Siri Hustvedt's 'Ghost Stories' is a fragmented memoir reflecting on grief following the 2024 death of her husband, writer Paul Auster, after his cancer diagnosis in 2023.
- ▪Sara Nović's 'Mother Tongue' recounts her experiences as a deaf person navigating the hearing world and connects her story to the broader disability rights movement.
- ▪JW Mason and Arjun Jayadev's 'Against Money' argues that money is not a true measure of value and functions as a tool of power and control.
- ▪Alan Mikhail's 'Newcomers' uses the dramatic lives of 17th-century couple Anthony and Grietje in New Amsterdam to illuminate early American society.
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From essential memoirs of grief, loss, and becoming to histories of rollicking life in pre-Revolutionary America and the grim management strategies of the corporate world, May offers some great nonfiction for readers of all tastes. * Turn Where: A Geography of Home, Chet’la Sebree May 5, The Dial Press Always trust a poet to deliver a beautiful memoir. For instance: Chet’la Sebree’s essays about, broadly, searching for home as a Black woman in America, blend memoir, cultural criticism, and history and deliver a formally inventive, emotionally rich personal history that stretches beyond the bounds of them self.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Literary Hub.
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