When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.
R.O. Kwon is the best-selling author of "The Incendiaries," a 2018 novel that was a National Book Critics Circle finalist. Her acclaimed new novel, "Exhibit," follows two women artists who explore hidden desires after beginning an extramarital affair.
'Black Women Writers at Work' edited by Claudia Tate (1983)
I love this book of fascinating, in-depth interviews Tate conducted with foundational Black women writers such as Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison. 'Black Women Writers at Work,' as Angela Davis has said, "serves as a much-needed reminder that the imagination always blazes trails that lead us toward more habitable futures." It's a volume of treasures, one I revisit again and again. Buy it here.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
'Girlhood' by Melissa Febos (2021)
This brilliant essay collection has helped me to think more deeply and truthfully about listening to my body, and to try to cast aside limiting scripts about what I get to desire and how I'm supposed to live. I've given copies of 'Girlhood' to many friends. Buy it here.
'Land of Milk and Honey' by C Pam Zhang (2023)
Set in a near future with severely limited food options, this second novel by the Booker Prize-nominated author of "How Much of These Hills Is Gold" raises powerful questions about the climate catastrophe and how we'll live, and what pleasures and fulfillment we might find on a rapidly changing Earth. Buy it here.
'Dictée' by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1982)
One of the first books written by a Korean-American writer to be published in the U.S., this formally inventive volume reads as though it miraculously sprang free from any pressures Cha could have felt to make her griefs more legible — and so, the thinking often goes, more easily peddled — than they might be to herself. It's an intensely freeing, rewarding book. Buy it here.
'A Map of Future Ruins' by Lauren Markham (2024)
Part memoir, part contemporary journalistic investigation and part a history of migration, this genre-traversing book ranges across some of today's most pressing disputes with such wisdom, clarity and grace that to read it is to have a foretaste of living in the better world that Markham imagines. Buy it here.
'The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse' edited by Kaveh Akbar (2022)
Bringing together verse from 110 poets, including contemporary writers, the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, and the 23rd-century B.C. Sumerian high priestess Enheduanna, this splendid collection explores faith and the divine. Buy it here.
This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.
-
5 cinematic cartoons about Bezos betting big on 'Melania'Cartoons Artists take on a girlboss, a fetching newspaper, and more
-
The fall of the generals: China’s military purgeIn the Spotlight Xi Jinping’s extraordinary removal of senior general proves that no-one is safe from anti-corruption drive that has investigated millions
-
Why the Gorton and Denton by-election is a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’Talking Point Reform and the Greens have the Labour seat in their sights, but the constituency’s complex demographics make messaging tricky
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
-
Is This Thing On? – Bradley Cooper’s ‘likeable and spirited’ romcomThe Week Recommends ‘Refreshingly informal’ film based on the life of British comedian John Bishop
-
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars – history at its most ‘human’The Week Recommends Alwyn Turner’s ‘witty and wide-ranging’ account of the interwar years
