1) This One and Wild Precious Life
The Path Back to Connection in a Fractured World
Anyone who read Sarah Wilson’s First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, her remarkable 2018 memoir about shifting our approach to anxiety and mental illness, will have high expectations for this new book. Her goal, she writes, was to find a way to talk about the feeling that “Something is not right. We’re not living life right. To try to grasp such a pain, to find the beginning and end, is like trying to bite your own teeth.” Instead of grasping too hard, then, she bravely explores what feels so wrong in her unforgettably wholehearted way. The common link among our personal, social, and global struggles—climate chaos, environmental destruction, local and global conflict, and our inability to come together to solve any of it—boils down, Wilson finds, to disconnection. The age of social distancing makes that truth more plain than ever before. So, where is healing to be found?
It sounds like an impossibly big task, but Wilson sets out to reconnect us with a series of short chapters, from “become a soul nerd” (unexpectedly, this is about evolutionary psychology) and “get full-fat spiritual” (an expansive vision of purpose and interconnectedness) to “start where you are #buylesslivemore.” She urges us to reconnect with ourselves, with our natural collectivity, with our higher selves, and with the earth. Interspersed with these topics are chapters about her many adventures hiking on nearly every continent, and how simply walking has shaped her understanding of life. On top of all this goodness, the book is peppered with poetry and with Wilson’s delightful marginalia. Whether it fires you up to change the world, or replenishes your sense of human goodness, this lovely book will not disappoint. -AT
2) What’s Your Story
A Journal for Everyday Evolution
Rebecca Walker and Lily Diamond are no strangers to innovating the memoir. Several of Walker’s earlier published works are autobiographical—including Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self—while Diamond’s best-selling Kale & Caramel: Recipes for Body, Heart, and Table is a fusion of memoir and cookbook. Their established creativity within the genre, and the fact that they met at a memoir-writing workshop Walker was leading on Maui, forecast how thoughtfully they have crafted What’s Your Story?, a guided journal that not only helps the writer express emotions and thoughts, but leads them to grow more deeply into themselves on a level that’s conscious, joyful, and authentic.
Walker and Diamond assure readers, “you will look back, le