Reading into Wellness: What Our Team is Reading
Woman Reading at a Small Table (c.1923). Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954). Oil on canvas. Kunstmuseum Bern.
Those familiar with our site and mission know that we believe in a truly holistic sense of health. This means that we view health as touching upon and being touched by all aspect of our personal as well as cultural lives. Our health is not only determined by our personal choices but the barriers for some and freedom for others that allow or disable us from making them.
Here are the books about & beyond health that some of our team members are dog-earing right now:
Almila, Editor-in-Chief & Founder
I’m a multiple-book (or impolitely, a rather scattered) reader. I’m currently devotedly reading “Between the World & Me” by The journalist Ta-Nehesi Coates, who painstakingly reported on systemic racism and white supremacy in the United States. He has been compared to the ever-beloved and revered James Baldwin by Toni Morrison, although Cornel West respectfully disagrees.
This eloquently sharp, honest, and raw epistolary draws Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” to the current continuing racist atmosphere. If you have not read “Fire Next Time,” read that first and move onto this one for a heartbreaking, twisted rope of white supremacist history tying the country.
The other book I’m reading is “Hallucinations” by the late Oliver Sacks, a profoundly-talented neurologist and writer simultaneously binding and unraveling the intricate connexion between our bodies and minds. I also have a copy of a recent issue of The Atlantic and a Fall 1998 copy of The Paris Review for a good measure of quick reads. This article was a fascinating perspective on the cult-favourite “Little Women”
Zarrin, Editorial Assistant
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by historian Yuval Noah Harari unlike other books about the history of humanity that “pursue either a historical or a biological approach,” instead, Harari “breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.” We highly recommend this long but satisfying read.
Maya Oren, Art & Visuals Director
I’m reading “What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding: A Memoir” by Kristin Newman, which chronicles a single woman’s journey through world travel and random romance while her friends are settled and married.
Ariella Elovic, Illustrator
I just finished Liana Finck’s “Passing for Human,” an equally touching and hilarious graphic memoir “about a young artist struggling against what’s expected of her as a woman, and learning to accept her true self, from an acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist.”
