Five Non-Fiction Favs of the year

and gratitude for the women who wrote them

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. As always, links are in bold, and there’s an audio of this pocket if that works better for your life. This week I’m sharing five non-fiction books that I’m grateful for. These are books that have encouraged me to embrace all the messy parts of myself while motivating me to make change, books that remind me of the power of community and love, and books that have offered me comfort and hope. The books below have been the best company, and I’m so grateful to them, and to the women who wrote them. As we head into the giving season, this is a great reminder to support local bookstores. If you don’t have a local bookstore, you can support ours by clicking on the links below.

Please stick around for some bookish conversation in the comments. What books kept you company this past year? Which ones are you carrying with you in your heart?

This is me dressed up as Trish on Halloween

1.Birding to Change the World by Trish O’Kane, A Memoir

This memoir is about taking care of your community. Trish, unable to save her home and her community from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, moves to Madison, Wisconsin and becomes passionate about saving her neighborhood park, Warner Park. She makes friends in her new city, and they work together to make the park a refuge for birds and wildlife but also for the many residents of the city, particularly the poorer residents, who have often been overlooked when it comes to city planning.

I loved this book because it showed what was possible when people work together to protect something they love. I also loved it because when I started reading it, I thought, “Hmmm… I wonder what my life would have been like if I had studied ecology instead of English, or if I had considered studying both,” and then Trish drops it on me that she didn’t take up birding till age 45, so basically I have no excuse for not pursuing any dreams I may still have, which brings me to the next book I am grateful for…

2. 1,000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round by Jami Attenberg

In 2018, Jami needed motivation to meet a deadline, and so she and a friend set out to write 1,000 words a day for two weeks. Jami opened this opportunity up to her online community, and it grew and grew and grew, and now there’s this beautiful book, organized by seasons, full of inspiring letters and words of wisdom from fellow writers.

Here’s one of my favorite letters on expiration dates by Mira Jacob

“Can we talk for a moment about expiration dates? The little invisible stamp we all carry in the lining of our foreheads that tells us that our time is running out, or just ran out, or ran out so long ago that there is nothing we can possibly write to make up for the literary life that might have been? Because I have a feeling about expiration dates for dreams in general (they’re bullshit) and writing dreams in particular (THEY’RE BULLSHIT) … I think about this all the time now. How easy it would have been to stop. How much social media primed me to believe that a debut author could not possibly be a brown woman in her forties. How I might have never seen any of my books reach the readers that were looking for them if I had let what I’d thought was my expiration date take me off the damn shelf. Because here’s the thing about expiration dates: They aren’t real. They’re made of whispers and insecurities and Instagram ads and someone else’s idea of what is possible for you. But they’re not made of you. (Your writing is made of you.)”

I love this book’s ease of access. It is compiled of short letters, so no matter what season of creativity I’m in, I can just flip through the pages and find something meaningful to remind me to keep plodding along, dreams intact.

Speaking of dreams, that brings me to my next book I’m grateful for which is…

3. Living Resistance, An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day by Kaitlyn Curtice

If you dream of a more beautiful world, but are feeling a little burned out, this might be the book for you.

Recently, a few friends and I have been sharing bits of light, things we find to weave through this dark fabric of our time. Kaitlyn recently posted this poem on Instagram, and my friend sent it to me.

If we’re not going back
And they’re not moving
Forward then we will
Stretch the bubble of time
In both directions until 
It bursts, and then we 
Will meet in that field
That Rumi talks about,
Lay down in it, and try 
To remember what it 
Always meant to be kin

Doesn’t it make you want to read everything she’s ever written? I made the realization recently that I don’t need to respond to recent events by leading a whole different life. I like my life, and I believe in my work. Instead, I’m considering how I can make some conscious, subtle shifts in the way I approach my life, shifts that leave me more curious and open.

Kaitlyn’s book has prompted such a shift in me. It is gentle but profound. I think many people are tired right now. They feel depleted in their efforts to make sense of the brokenness around them. Kaitlyn’s book offers a way through, a reminder that resistance can lead to healing. Kaitlyn offers a way to engage in the world that makes us more whole.

She begins the book with a letter to her readers. “Dear Reader, Feeler, Un-learner, and Friend, I want you to remember something really important as you read this book: you are a human being. You have not yet arrived, but you are continually arriving...The timeline of your life is not a straight line, after all, it is a series of ebbs and flows, backs and forths, heres and theres. You are nowhere and everywhere all at once, and that means that most of the time, the best you can do is be present to the moment, be open to the unlearning and the learning, and trust that you’re dong the work of Love.

As you read this book, you may get overwhelmed. When you do, come back to this page and read these words again. Repeat them to yourself as a kind of medicine: I am a human being. I am always arriving.”

I love the reminder that no matter how old I am, or how much progress I make towards my goals, I will always be arriving, which brings me to the next book I am grateful for this year which is…

4. Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison

Splinters is a memoir about Jamison’s journey to figure out who she is a mother, artist, teacher and human after she makes the decision to divorce her husband. Jamison’s writing is stunning.

In her memoir, Leslie writes “Those families on the beach were a reminder of what I’d chosen to break. But I knew this would happen no matter how I lived: I’d spot the impossible ideal somewhere else. This was the summons- with motherhood, with romance, with everything. To stop fetishizing the delusion of a pure feeling, or a love unpolluted by damage. To commit to the compromised version instead.”

I tend to get big feelings right before the holidays about all that is missing or ways that I wish some things were different. I imagine I’m not alone in this, but still, I sometimes feel alone in this. Leslie helped me feel less alone. Her words are a reminder to lean into the life we have rather than to constantly seek the ideal or imagined life.

This gratitude for the life I have, the gifts that have been bestowed upon me brings me to the last book I’m sharing with you today…

5. The Serviceberry, Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer

This book feels like a gift. It fits nicely in my hands, and it has beautiful images on the front and inside covers of birds feasting on serviceberries. I will confess that Robin’s book just came out last week, so I haven’t finished it yet. I’ve just started it, and I plan to savor it, like I did with Braiding Sweetgrass, a book I return to for wisdom and beauty. I’m so delighted to have another one of Robin’s works in my home and in my hands, to draw on her wisdom in a time that confounds and confuses me.

“In a traditional Anishinaabe economy, the land is the source of all good and services, which are distributed in a kind of gift exchange: one life is given in support of another. The focus is on supporting the good of the people, not only an individual. Receiving a gift from the land is coupled to attached responsibilities of sharing, respect, reciprocity, and gratitude—of which you will be reminded…I’m reminded that my life is contingent upon the lives of others, without whom, I simply would not exist.”

My Substack friend Bill Davison, at Easy by Nature, wrote a bit more on Robin’s book, and you can read here if you like. Bill’s work has the most beautiful photos, and he also chooses the best poems. His post also features a gorgeous poem by Linda Hogan.

I would love to know which books make your heart hum. Please chirp up in the comments.

Cheers!

Mary