R.O. Kwon's 6 favorite books that are full of wisdom

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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. 

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'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.

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