Reading List
Louise Erdrich
Native American Novelist and Poet
Louise Erdrich, born in Little Falls, Minnesota, in 1954, is an Indigenous-American novelist, poet and children’s author, and an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. She has written 28 books. Her novel The Round House won the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction, and The Night Watchman won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She owns Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore in Minneapolis that focuses on Native American literature. Her picks here, from a Year in Reading essay for The Millions, include Melvin Konner’s Women After All, Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas, Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us and Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland.
Nomadland
Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
by Jessica Bruder · 2018 · Journalism
“This is an important book. Bruder writes about economic refugees who downsize from regular houses into minivans, downsize from regular jobs with benefits into utter uncertainty.” — via Article, December 2017
The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman · 2008 · Nonfiction
“I know, still not a cheerful thought, but oddly I found real comfort in this altogether humane and fascinating tour of a planet that has shrugged off all human presence.” — via Article, December 2017
Whereas
by Layli Long Soldier · 2017 · Literature
“Using the language of the colonizer to talk about what it means to be colonized, Long Soldier takes us down some rough roads.” — via Article, December 2017
Women After All
Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy
by Melvin Konner · 2016 · Feminism
“This year was a promotional campaign for this book. The writer is a professor in the Program of Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. His conclusions give me, well, hope.” — via Article, December 2017
