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Esther Safran Foer, I WANT YOU TO KNOW WE'RE STILL HERE

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Esther Safran Foer, I WANT YOU TO KNOW WE'RE STILL HERE

Esther: Yes, I think so, maybe because so much of it was unknown, maybe because I grew up with no grandmothers, with no aunts and uncles, no first cousins. People around me that I went to school with had all of those things. I was always digging. Maybe it was because my parents wouldn't talk about it. You always want to know what they won't tell you. I was always digging. I'm still digging. My memory jars, as they are, which look a little like an art installation in my living room, include jars that have dirt from mass graves but also from beautiful times. My seven-year-old grandson brought me back a baggy of sand from a trip to Greece because I don't have that and he wanted to share his memory with me. A lot of them are really beautiful happy memories. When one of our sons got married, I decorated the plate. You know the tradition of breaking a plate. The two mothers break a plate. It's a family commitment to the couple, to the marriage. After we broke the plate, I thought, oh, that’ll be perfect in a jar. It's a beautiful memory every time I look at it.

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Adrienne Bankert, YOUR HIDDEN SUPERPOWER

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Adrienne Bankert, YOUR HIDDEN SUPERPOWER

Adrienne: We're all looking for our pot of gold, whatever that means. It may not actually be gold. It may be something else, but we're all looking for it. One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that for me personally, when you hide who you are, when you hide your gifts, you're doing a disservice to everybody else. I think sometimes we try to be either too nice or we try to fit into this mold or we try to do the right thing. When we're just ourselves and stop hiding behind what we think should be, we are a lot more satisfied and fulfilled. It doesn't matter what you do in life, any industry, for the love of god, everybody stop hiding. That would be the mantra for this year. Stop hiding. Get out there. Show people what you're working with.

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Maria Quiban Whitesell, YOU CAN’T DO IT ALONE

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Maria Quiban Whitesell, YOU CAN’T DO IT ALONE

Maria: I couldn't have done what I did, we couldn't have gone through what we've gone through and continue to go through today without our family counselor, our village I like to say. I know that I couldn't have done it alone. I think that's why we decided to title the book You Can't Do It Alone. You need to have a village. You need to find your people. I know some people might be saying, you know what, I don't have family, I don't have a circle of friends like you did, Maria. I say, you're actually wrong because of this, we have technology. We have the ability to actually find our village ourselves. I encourage you to do that because it's really important for your heart, for you, and for the people who are helping you. Don't deprive them of helping you because helping does heal. It feels good to help other people. Please invite that in your life.

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Maria Russo, HOW TO RAISE A READER

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Maria Russo, HOW TO RAISE A READER

Maria: Yes, exactly. This is what people do to kids all the time. I'm a huge fan of librarians because librarians actually are on the cutting edge of this stuff. They know. They know the research and they watch kids. There are many librarians in this country who are rebelling and refusing to shelve their books by reading level. A lot of this that we've inherited, it's almost like it just won't leave our consciousness that got in there in the sixties and the seventies. We're all still responding to outdated ideas and notions. Another good one is the idea that comic books and graphic novels are not real books. If your kid is really into reading only graphic novels, well, that's not really reading. That doesn't count. That's ridiculous, especially in this culture we're in. It's such a visual culture. When images and words work together, it's even more powerful. Again, this was what was so great about doing this book. We got to really look at the research. The research shows that -- they did MRIs on the brains of kids who are reading. A kid who's reading a text with only words, one side of the brain is really lit up and working, and that's great.

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Special Re-Release: Glory Edim, WELL-READ BLACK GIRL

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Special Re-Release: Glory Edim, WELL-READ BLACK GIRL

Glory: This all started from me developing this community, Well-Read Black Girl, online. I had this love for books that I had read in my childhood and at my college, Howard University. I wanted to share that same feeling of being this well-read, educated, vivacious, curious black girl in the world. I felt like there weren’t enough representations of black characters. By starting a book club, starting this online platform on Instagram and Twitter, I was able to pull everyone together. We were just sharing the love of our first books, whether it was Toni Morrison or Alice Walker or Maya Angelou. We were having these great conversations about what it means to be in a black woman in the world and what it means to be sometimes feelings a little bit isolated and how we can come together and change the perceptions of what it meant to be a black woman. It really, really started because my partner made me this shirt that said Well-Read Black Girl. I would wear it on the subway. People would start having conversations with me and talking to me. I was like, there is something here. I want to really elaborate and expand what this means to be a well-read person. Now it's turned into this whole literary movement from that one shirt and that one idea. It's really grown into this whole other new experience.

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Brad Montague, BECOMING BETTER GROWNUPS

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Brad Montague, BECOMING BETTER GROWNUPS

Brad: I had this thought of what it would be, just cute things kids would share, like the Kids Say the Darndest Things kind of idea of, they said a word wrong and it's silly. There is that where kids are funny and they're brilliant and creative and so hilarious. One kid blew my mind. It was actually a Skype conversation with a classroom. This kid had this very serious look on his face. Then he raised his hand. The teacher said, "Okay, you've got the microphone. Tell Brad." Then he went, "You know, sharks probably aren't afraid of other sharks." I thought, whoa, I've never thought about that. Still, I think about that sometimes. [laughs] When I would pose the question, "What would it look like to be a great grownup? Tell me about a great grownup. I want to be a great grownup, so tell me," they wouldn't skip a beat. They would immediately tell me about somebody in their lives that -- I was thinking it would be them telling me something huge, like somebody who bought them a pony and took them on a giant trip, but it was always little things. It was about the way that their mom would pick them up from school. There was a story one kid gave about going to the park with his uncle and that that was a regular thing. He loved rolling down the hill and making him laugh. It was this incredible reminder that all they want is for the grownups in their lives to see them. Then when I started sharing that, I realized that there was actually neuroscience to prove that, that there was developmental psychology that had shown that that's what helps us grow. The active ingredient in all of our developments is love, and not just one big grand gesture of love, but over time, every day, just little bitty bits of love. For me, it made me show up differently in my house with my kids. It made me, whenever I saw my friends who were stressing out about being parents or saw teachers, to just be able to let them relax their shoulders and let them know, hey, you don't have to be spectacular. You already are. Just your presence of looking them in the eyes and listening is going to change everything.

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Leslie Gray Streeter, BLACK WIDOW

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Leslie Gray Streeter, BLACK WIDOW

Leslie: What's so interesting to me is that I wanted to make the book about being a widow from my perspective. It's just the way my life is. We had a lot in common, like All My Children. We had things that were not in common, like our races or our religion. Those just kind of go into our story, not in a neon sign way, but that's just part of my life. I think that there were people who read it who were like, does it have to be so much about race? I'm like, yeah, because that's part of what it was. It's not about race, but it is in a way because that's part of our existence. Also, it's a way that people responded to us when we walked into a room together or did not respond because they didn't think that we were together because they're dumb. It was 2015.

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Victoria James, WINE GIRL

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Victoria James, WINE GIRL

Victoria: I thought if I kept working in better places that the environment would become better, but I just found that it seemed almost the fancier the restaurant, the more toxic the culture. For a while, I was writing just as my own sort of therapy to work through a lot of the sexism and misogyny I faced. Then after a while, it was like, I think that maybe this could be a book. There's a difference between writing for yourself and putting all of your embarrassing moments out there. What really inspired me to do so was that I became a leader, a partner at Cote, this restaurant. I saw how many young women looked up to me for guidance and to be this role model. I realized that I was one of the few women in wine that was in a position to write this book because unfortunately, a lot of women in wine and restaurants still face a lot of pushback. They don't have the luxury of writing a book like this because they need to get a job. I figured if I didn't write it, who would? It's not just my story. It's so many women's stories. It's a narrative I think a lot of women, anyone who's ever worked in a restaurant or public service, can definitely relate to.

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Nina Renata Aron, GOOD MORNING, DESTROYER OF MEN'S SOULS

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Nina Renata Aron, GOOD MORNING, DESTROYER OF MEN'S SOULS

Nina: It is really personal and emotional. It's a memoir. It's sort of laced with cultural history. It's meant to be the first literary memoir about codependency. I grew up in a household with a family member who struggled with addiction. Then it's about largely how that played out in my romantic relationships, subsequent relationships. I had an affair when I was married and young mother with an ex-boyfriend who was a hardcore drug addict who was in and out of sobriety for many years. We were madly, desperately in love. I know a lot of people don't have personal experience with that kind of hardcore addiction. It's also broadly about expectations that women place on ourselves and that throughout history that have been placed upon us culturally and how much of ourselves to give in love, whether it's in any kind of relationship, in motherhood, in our family relationships. Hopefully, it has broader reach beyond just those enjoy a good gritty addiction memoir. I always was reading addiction memoirs my whole life. I never understood why none were written by people who lived in those households and suffered through that. There are resources out there for people who have that experience, but I always was looking for -- I wanted this book, so I had to write it.

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Judith Viorst, NEARING NINETY

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Judith Viorst, NEARING NINETY

Judith: Milton and I were both married before. We've had sixty years together and three children together and made every mistake and foolish choice and inability to resolve fights in a mature and intelligent way. It's a work in progress. You'll always be a work in progress. We've gotten better and better at it. Actually, COVID-19 is kind of an interesting test. Here we are in the house together. We don't go anywhere except for a walk around the neighborhood. We find that the conversation we started enjoying with each other sixty years ago is still continuing, that we still enjoy reading the papers in companionable silence, and that a glass of his well-selected wine and a nice dinner by me is a lovely way to end the afternoon. We have many, many points of connection. We treasure and protect the marriage. We know that this is something of value. It's what I've called in some writings that I've done, the third thing. It's not about him. It's not about me. It's about this marriage that we are creating together. Sometimes when we're losing a fight or giving in on some issues, it's not, I lost that or I'm compromising. We're feeding the marriage. I think that the marriage as a creation, as something you make together is a very, very valuable way to think about what life is all about.

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Phyllis Grant, EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL

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Phyllis Grant, EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL

Phyllis: I've been collecting hundreds of recipes for years that I've been developing. It broke my heart a little bit to narrow it down to seventeen. Now it feels like such a relief because each one can have a purpose, either for teaching someone something new, like making tart dough or a template for salad dressing. Start with what's in this book. Then just look around and see what you have. As long as the balance is about the same, you don't need lemon. You can use sherry wine vinegar. You don't need olive oil. You can use coconut oil. What I'm hoping is this gives people a little more confidence to play in the kitchen and not be so rigid and not be so locked into recipes because you don't learn until you step away from the recipes, at least I didn't.

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Maya Shanbhag Lang, WHAT WE CARRY

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Maya Shanbhag Lang, WHAT WE CARRY

Maya: Writing about that was so cathartic and freeing. It helped me process these memories that I didn't even know I was carrying around inside of me. As kids, we just grow up in whatever soil we have, whatever environment we have. We don't really think about it. I think kids are remarkable and miraculous for this reason. We just find ways to thrive like flowers between the cracks in the sidewalk. I had never thought of myself as having a particularly rough childhood. I went to great schools. I was really close with my mom. I certainly never thought of myself as having been abused at all. To have that vantage point as a grownup and as a parent myself, to be able to look back and say, oh, that happened and I never gave it thought and now I can, that was really powerful. For a lot of people who have grown up in dysfunctional homes or with difficult parents, I think a lot of times what we tell ourselves is, whatever happened wasn't that bad. Other people have it so much worse. Other kids have it so much worse. To come out of that stance and instead of trying to put him on a spectrum of, well, how bad was he? to instead just claim my story and say, this is what happened, that freed me from under its spell.

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Mary Katherine Backstrom, MOM BABBLE

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Mary Katherine Backstrom, MOM BABBLE

MK: I am in my zone now. I understand this. I see your Play-Doh. What I am just now seeing in your house is exactly what I cover in this book. Honestly, I didn't want it to be too serious. I didn't want it to be a prescriptive book. I wanted it to be like a conversation between two parents from one mother to another like a casual conversation on the couch. My entire goal was just to make parents feel a little less alone. I repeat a lot sometimes that I struggle with postpartum depression, but that's where really all of my writing career was born from. I had a very hard time leaving my house when I had my first son. Just the anxiety was very paralyzing. I found the majority of my supportive community online. Being able to share just very normal experiences of parenting through stories helped me feel less alone. Being able to write those and then share those with other parents has been a really gratifying experience for me. The feedback that I get from other parents is just awesome as well. I love hearing people say, oh, my gosh, I thought that I was alone in that.

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Ruthie Lindsey, THERE I AM

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Ruthie Lindsey, THERE I AM

Ruthie: I'm like, listen, when you finish this, forget me. Forget my name. Forget my story. This is for you. Healing is for you. This hope is yours. This love is yours. You don't need me. I'm going to get the fuck out of the way so you can do this journey because you're so deserving. I feel like the healing journey is remembering what's so right with us, not what's wrong with us. It's an unlearning more than anything else because I thought I was so broken. I believed that. I thought my body hated me. It was the source of this pain, so I thought my body had just completely failed me. Now I'm like, oh, my god, this beautiful body that’s just been loving me and holding me and holding the divinity within me and calling me home and just protecting me and being so strong and so resilient and loving me so hard when I hated her. I think all of these painful things that happened ultimately were all these invitations to come home to myself and to do this work. If my life had turned out the way I thought it would, I would be a very surface-y human that would never have woken up, that would never have gone so deep, would never have been able to be a good friend, honestly, an empathetic friend. I wouldn't be able to show up in the world the way that I believe I can now and have the honor of getting to now because all those things happened. I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't change one single thing because I know it all created me to be this human that I have the honor of getting to be today that's messy and that makes tons of mistakes but also is filled with so much goodness and wonder and beauty just like every other soul on planet Earth.

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Lena Dunham, NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL

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Lena Dunham, NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL

Lena: I wrote a novel in fourth grade. Everyone has one of these. I recently found it. It was about a boy who lived in the ruins in India because I'd heard once there were some ruins in India, I did not do good research, and has to save his friend from a snake bite. I remember I was in fourth grade and thought people didn't like me. For that period of time, I was in the ruins with this kid who was lonely but much more successfully adventurous than I was. It gave me that sense of connection and purpose. Writing's done that for me ever since. It seems like this is how it is for you. It's also a way to frame your experience and understand what you've been through and also try to reach a hand out to other people and ask, do you know what this feels like too? For me, being read and having someone understand or exchanging a book with someone that we both love, reading someone else, that's the way that I know how to feel understood.

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Alicia Keys, MORE MYSELF

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Alicia Keys, MORE MYSELF

Alicia: I started to dissect … Different moments in my life were revealing that I was quite oppressed, I would use the word, from the standards of what it is to be a woman, what it is to be a successful woman, what it is to be "beautiful," what it is to be beloved or whatever it is. I started to find myself changing myself or being extra-concerned when I picked up my kids from school. Do I look nice enough to go out with? and all these things that were -- really, I just truly didn't understand how convoluted, how that was affecting me. I didn't even realize that I was that person. I never even thought I was that person. I thought I was super independent and completely a feminist and really strong. I realized, wow, there's so much of me that I'm discovering. That discovery started to uncover parts that I wanted to share and I wanted to think more about and really challenge the way that we're told to be who we think we're supposed to be because we see it in front of us since the day we're born. We don't really get a chance to meet ourselves. That was what I was starting to do. I wanted to share my personal journey with discovering more of myself.

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Lindsay Powers, YOU CAN'T F*CK UP YOUR KIDS

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Lindsay Powers, YOU CAN'T F*CK UP YOUR KIDS

Lindsay: It's an eye-catching title. It's provocative because I wanted to start a conversation. I think that parents are under so much pressure to be all the things to everyone, especially mothers, but everyone. I'm really proud that my book doesn't just speak to moms. It speaks to all different kinds of families and all different kinds of caregivers and family setups. I had two motivations to writing this book. I've been a journalist for a long time, specifically covering science and health and culture. When I was judged -- I opened the book talking about a woman calling me disgusting for breastfeeding my then ten-month-old at a pizza shop in Brooklyn. I just felt like, what the heck? C'mon, we're all in this together. Chill. You kind of have that feeling like you can't win. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. You breastfeed too long, you're a weirdo. You don't breastfeed enough, you're a bad mom.

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Brad Meltzer, THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY

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Brad Meltzer, THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY

Brad: Those are the parts we always put in the book that are most important, not where they're succeeding and do amazing things, but where they're totally utterly failing; watching Abraham Lincoln lose eight elections. Walt Disney goes bankrupt with one of his first businesses. He's so poor at that moment that he sleeps in a bus station. We all know Disney as this great property. Everyone goes to Disney World and Disneyland. It's the most beautiful place and wonderful place on earth. When I teach my kids that Walt Disney failed, that the first Mickey Mouse cartoon was a disaster, that when Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse, he called him Mortimer Mouse -- his wife is like, "That's a terrible name. Mortimer? That's a terrible name." He said, "Okay. What do you think is better?" She's like, "I don't know. What about Mickey?" That's how the world gets Mickey Mouse, not because America's the greatest country on earth, not because Walt Disney's always a genius, because his wife is like, "Shmuck, listen. Pay attention." My kids are like, "Oh. So the first draft can be bad?" I'm like, exactly. You've got to work at it to make greatness. I want to teach my kids that you fail and you fail and you fail, but if you get back up again, that's how you fly.

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Betsey Johnson, BETSEY: A MEMOIR

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Betsey Johnson, BETSEY: A MEMOIR

Betsey: That's why I thought my entire story might be interesting, not just the fashion piece. That's just one little piece. I consider the family piece, the single mothering piece, the getting through the illnesses piece -- that was harder than the fashion business piece. Fashion and cutting and sewing and the clothing thing was always a fun category I loved because of my dancing school and my dancing costumes. All of a sudden, my dear friend Mark, the writer who put all my talking together, he just kept bugging me how I have to do a book. I have to do a book. I said, "No, I can't write, Mark. I can't do a book." He really made me do it a couple years ago. I'm real happy with the way it looks. I was allowed to put some drawings in there and some little doodles. A book with just words is really terrifying to me. I'm not a reader of "book" books. I think I want to start now, if someone would recommend a really great book. Anyway, I'm just so relieved that it's out and people seem to like it. It's a light read and a quick read and at the end of the day, I hope, an inspiring read.

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Jeff Gordinier, HUNGRY

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Jeff Gordinier, HUNGRY

Jeff: I don't think he intended that to be the case, but [René Redzepi] was kind of my therapist. Jokingly, a friend of mine, about a year ago before the book came out, when he read it in galleys, he said, "I love it. It's eat, pray, eat, love, eat, eat, eat," like Eat Pray Love with way more eating. I was like, yeah, it kind of is actually. I love Elizabeth Gilbert, so I thought that was flattering. Even if some of your audience is not into high-end tasting menus and the high stakes of gastronomy and all that, all of which I admit right now seems very far away, the book is actually really about reinvention and personal change. It's really about how I changed and René changed in the course of these four years we spent together.

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