Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe by Aomawa Shields (2023) is an inspiring memoir — Shields is an astronomer, astrobiologist, actress, mother, and wife. She’s also an African-American woman with a PhD in a STEM field who was privileged to go to boarding school and M.I.T, but hasContinue reading “Life on Other Planets”
Tag Archives: Memoir
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden
I loved Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (2023) by Camille T. Dungy so much that I had to buy my own copy after reading my library copy. Soil really defies categorization–it’s a memoir (much of which she wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic), but she also writes about black history and social justiceContinue reading “Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden”
I Won’t Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You
Highly recommend this powerful anti-racist memoir and call to each of us to find our voices to speak our truths.
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
From the Central Park birder who was involved in a viral racist incident in 2020 comes this well-written, insightful, and funny memoir that I highly recommend.
The Elephants in My Backyard
The idea of The Elephants in My Backyard (2016) by Rajiv Surendra was interesting–a young actor is so enthralled with a character in a book and the similarities he shares with the character that he starts an email correspondence with the author and goes on a years-long quest to prepare himself for the role byContinue reading “The Elephants in My Backyard”
Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body
Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body (2020), by Rebekah Taussig, was a recent book group selection, and I’m so glad! If we live long enough, all of us, without exception, will become disabled. Sitting pretty, by rebekah taussig Taussig writes brilliantly and with humor about growing up disabled and being aContinue reading “Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body”
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
This memoir by noted Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is highly fatphobic and didn’t make me want to begin a running habit.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Here’s the first entry in my new blog, Reading While Fat, in which I will review a book every week and tell you whether there are any fat positive or fatphobic aspects to it.
