Author: Sarah Lawson

Ben Sloan’s second book of poems, Then On Out Into a Cloudless Sky, is a collection of work that speaks to various themes and eras, highlighting the far-ranging interests of its author. As an object, the book is a delight, an elegant pamphlet with a cover that captures the bright blue of sky and a wisp of cloud, assembled with a five-hole stitch of orange thread along the fold. The work within is dedicated to Sloan’s students at the Fluvanna Correctional Center, and features an epigraph from Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel The Last Gift: “Sometimes I’m struck with amazement when I consider exactly how I have found myself here. But then I suppose many people can say that about their lives.”

After speaking with Sloan, a man whose path in life has taken its own unique shape and whose career as a teacher has influenced countless students’ trajectories, that epigraph seems a fitting way to begin.

Sloan grew up on a farm in southeast Missouri and, while his family had books at home, his hometown was so small that it lacked a public library or even a school library. According to Sloan, “It wasn’t until I was about 16 that I started going to a local public library in St. Louis,” where his family had moved. He quickly found poetry and remembers discovering Margaret Atwood, whose work made a strong impression on him. “I bought a paperback copy of her poems and was amazed by them,” he recalls. “This short form, in a very condensed way, really opened a door. It just seemed remarkable to me. I remember trying to figure out, ‘How did she do that?’”

At college, Sloan took creative writing classes and enjoyed reading widely, earning his MFA from Brooklyn College, where he studied with the influential poet John Ashbery, eventually working as his assistant for a year. “He was a very sweet and generous person,” says Sloan, who also has a Ph.D. in American literature from the City University of New York Graduate Center.

From 2003 to 2022, Sloan taught at Piedmont Virginia Community College. While there, he got involved in the Higher Education in Prison Program, which offers opportunities for incarcerated learners to earn an associate degree while at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, the Buckingham Correctional Center, or the Dillwyn Correctional Center. Sloan taught in both the Fluvanna and Buckingham programs, building on past experience teaching in a prison setting when he lived in North Carolina. “As a culture, we’ve decided to hide prisons from ourselves. … I have always been interested in working with marginalized and disenfranchised students,” he says.

All told, Sloan taught in prison programs for more than 15 years, and found it to be meaningful work despite limited computer access and the often frustrating protocols that shaped the experience—especially during the early COVID-19 pandemic. However, Sloan remained committed to the work, adapted, and found that, even as he influenced his students in their writing, they also influenced him. “Their writing was often so honest and direct. … Some of what I’ve learned over the years, in college and graduate school, I realized I needed to drop in order to get to the point … not to mess around with a lot of filler,” he says.

This directness shows up in his recent collection, where poems function as a direct transfer of his perspective to the reader—unadorned but insightful ways of thinking about the everyday. Though some of the poems in Then On Out Into a Cloudless Sky are historical in nature, those that stand out with the most personal style are the ones that examine small moments and fancies, such as in “Hunched Groups.”

Trying to figure out what it is I am thinking today / I eventually just give up and decide to let it all go, / and when I do I see the day sitting out there / all around me like a murder of crows peering down / from power lines, backs pressed up against / the surrounding blue, hunched groups of them / puffing on cigars and arguing with one another / in the same gravelly voices heavy smokers use / when they talk together on their coffee breaks.

Ben Sloan, “Hunched Groups”

Other poems suggest a thematic influence from his students, sharing perspectives from the back seat of a police car in “Arriving,” and of a girl about to be taken to juvenile detention in “Departing,” which contains this excerpt:

…But before being taken away / to juvenile detention, just to break one final rule, what the hell, / she chases from his chain-link cage, and into the woods, / their dog, Jimi Hendrix, who, stunned, not knowing what else to do, / starts to run, teaching himself how it’s done as he goes.

Ben Sloan, “Departing”

As in Sloan’s own early interest in Atwood’s work, his poems spur the reader to pull them apart, to dig into the power of the poet’s concise phrasing. “When I read, it opens up a new space inside of me,” he says. “I just hope that when people read my poems, it opens up a space for them, a new way to see things.”

Poet Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, Martyr!, explores themes of addiction and sobriety, grief and grace, trauma and love. Rich with Daedalian prose, this semi-autobiographical bildungsroman tells the story of Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian American poet and recovering alcoholic. 

Born in Iran but currently living in an Indiana college town, Cyrus is drifting, purposeless, and largely unattached. A couple of years into sobriety, he is struggling to learn how to live and write again. The high-highs and the low-lows mostly disappeared when he quit drinking, but the poet wrestles with understanding what remains, what meaning his life holds. His days are loosely constructed around a few people. He is removed from the world, mourning his isolation while also nursing it. 

This apartness is rooted in his family history. Akbar weaves his own with Cyrus’ experiences to create an intricate tapestry of a narrative. Cyrus grew up in the U.S., with his father moving from Iran to escape the grief of losing his mother, who died when her flight to Dubai was accidentally shot down. As a novelist, Akbar skillfully fuses fiction with history, modeling this aspect of the story on the real-life tragedy of Iran Air Flight 655, a commercial airliner that was mistakenly attacked by the USS Vincennes in 1988. The book grapples with what it means, politically and personally, that this kind of tragedy can kill hundreds of people, leaving others—like Cyrus—forever traumatized, and yet be largely unremembered by many Americans. 

The fictionalized version of this trauma is at the root of the questions that Cyrus chases through the pages of Martyr!: What makes a death—and, in turn, a life—meaningful and who gets to interpret that meaning. “My mom died for nothing… She had to share her death with three hundred other people,” Cyrus reflects. “My dad died anonymously after spending decades cleaning chicken shit on some corporate farm. I want my life—my death—to matter more than that.” And so Cyrus becomes obsessed with martyrdom, historically but also as a way of indulging his own thanatotic temptations. 

Like the character he crafted in Cyrus, Akbar was born in Tehran and is a writer in recovery. Iranian American identity and addiction are central themes across his two collections of poetry and a chapbook titled Portrait of the Alcoholic. Some of the poems in these collections lay groundwork for Martyr!—anecdotes and phrasings repeated and reworked, the creative process of the writer re-shaping the stories of his life, rethinking the meanings that can be inferred on the page. A more abstracted version of this can also be seen in the zine (available at martyrzine.com) that Akbar made to accompany the novel. 

For Cyrus, the shift in his status quo comes when he decides to write a book about martyrs as a way to pursue his interest and reinvigorate his own creative process. He soon embarks on a journey to meet Orkideh, a dying Persian artist, whose final exhibit is an Abramović-esque installation in which she talks to museumgoers about death. Enmeshed with Cyrus’ pilgrimage are stories told from the points of view of family and friends, as well as sections of Cyrus’ draft manuscript and dream sequences, including one in which Orkideh cuts off fingers to buy Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” hinting at the sacrifices made for art, for poetry.

Through these structural elements, Akbar creates a dynamic experience of past and present while also setting up a Socratic dialogue of sorts, as the character’s contributions combine to explore the acts of care that give life meaning when we share and hold each other’s stories as modes of healing and love. There is inquiry into the roles people play, the performances we offer, even to those we care about, protecting them from ourselves—which is also to say, preventing the possibility for true connection.

In a flashback, Cyrus’s AA sponsor Gabe offers the advice, “Quit things in the order they’re killing you.” This is shared to help Cyrus address more serious addictions before attempting to quit smoking, but it also implies less visible dependencies on beliefs that can also kill us from within. Cyrus discovers that sobriety does not heal him but rather uncovers things he spent years dissociating from, mindsets that prove to be as difficult to kick as any substance. Substance use had been his core coping method, and Martyr! explores the ethics of self-pity, the narcissism of addiction, and what comes after. Cyrus begins to reexamine the beliefs he has held about the world and himself, to rebuild trust, and to share his life with others. 

In this nimble debut, Akbar avoids the pitfalls of a hero’s journey in which a character ends up at sobriety, choosing instead to examine the opportunities for grace and transformation within a life of sobriety. He chronicles how Cyrus spends his time, how he finds redemption in his ongoing recovery process, and how he understands himself in the world. In the end, Cyrus’ quest leads him to an increased capacity for self-reflection, accountability, and love. He is no longer able to blame fate or family for his life’s ordeals, while neither wanting to let go of that life so easily nor hold it too close within himself. 

If you or someone you know is experiencing substance use issues, Region Ten offers resources and support services that may be able to help. Learn more at regionten.org.

In considering the bookish highlights of the past year—the breadth of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and zines read and shared with others; the bookstore shelves browsed and little free libraries visited; the virtual and in-person readings, discussions, and book clubs attended—a theme emerges. Books by queer writers, about queer characters, and curated by queer booksellers are as critically important as ever. They are also notable in their shared attention to exploring the intersections of self and stranger, mundane and otherworldly, and joy and grief, spotlighting the fluid and universal concepts that unite us.

In times when the world can feel crushing in its extremes and the weight of genocide, health inequities, and climate collapse stoops our backs and hunches our shoulders, these books and spaces offer comfort and encouragement to take a breath, take action, and take care of each other. 

Poem Bitten by a Man by Brian Teare 

For anyone familiar with Lambda Literary Award-winning poet and University of Virginia professor Brian Teare’s work, Poem Bitten by a Man will be a joy to encounter, and for those new to it, an invitation. This book-length lyric essay explores themes of Southern identity, queerness, and illness, alongside the lived experiences, work, and inspirations of artists, creating a collage drawn from the archives, the poet’s own journals, and the paintings whose physicality belies the real and imagined worlds from which we admire them. 

This book made the list for the abundant pleasure of holding Teare’s phrases in one’s mouth while reading lines such as “Glyph or grammar, the difference has something to do with time, the way I open the notebook then the laptop years later, write then type, fold seconds into each syllable, minutes into each sentence, the selves of each moment cool & creased as they collapse into pleats.” 

What else to know: Albion Books, Teare’s poetry micropress, is currently in the middle of its ninth subscription series of limited-edition, hand-bound poetry chapbooks, which reflect the same care and attention to detail that Teare puts into his writing. 

We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride 

National Book Award finalist and local author Amber McBride’s young adult novel in verse is for readers of all ages. A mythical journey through grief and depression, the tale is filled with magic, even while exploring the violence and pain of white supremacy, suicide, and childhood trauma. Its thoughtful content warnings should be taken seriously, though, and it is not a book for everyone or every mood. However, it is an honest and heartfelt work that was inspired by McBride’s own experience grappling with clinical depression, and informed by her grandmother’s Hoodoo practices, which were passed down to her. Ultimately, We Are All So Good at Smiling made this list for the ways it opens up readers to conversations around mental health, and celebrates the power of friendship and family, community and healing. 

What else to know: McBride’s new book of poetry, a collection that draws inspiration from Hoodoo and tarot in examining death, rebirth, and Black womanhood, will be published in February. 

Open Throat by Henry Hoke 

For queer mountain lions and the people who love them, by which I mean: You should all read this book and share it with others, if you haven’t already. Charlottesville native Henry Hoke returns with another slim tome that topples preconceived notions you may have about whose stories get told and how. This short and singular book is more than a bit unlike other novels that have attempted to probe the topics of queerness, chosen families, human destructiveness, and environmental collapse—and is better for it in terms of both its unique narrative approach and its compact structure. Earning starred reviews and making best-of lists aplenty, Open Throat is a surreal and satisfying exploration of community, storytelling, and identity that offers a propulsive and unforgettable reading experience. 

What else to know: Hoke will moderate a conversation with fellow writer Kaveh Akbar in January at New Dominion Bookshop. 

The Beautiful Idea

No one can claim that Charlottesville doesn’t have great bookstores. From used bookshops with thousands of titles stacked every which way to stores specializing in bright, new books and literary events with award-winning authors, it’s a decadent ecosystem for the bookish among us. This saturation makes it all the more exciting when a local space opens that offers new and needed realms of books and zines. Enter The Beautiful Idea, a trans-owned, antifascist bookstore (and more) that opened in September on the Downtown Mall, bringing together the offerings of the F12 Infoshop with dozens of queer vendors, artists, and bookmakers. Tall shelves line the walls, filled with novels, nonfiction, graphic novels, zines, and so much more, with a focus on queer and trans writers as well as radical and antifascist perspectives. 

What else to know: If the in-store selection feels like sensory overload, try focusing on the staff picks shelf or sign up for the Antifa Book Club to receive curated books and zines each month.

In Tea Leaves, a new collection of short stories, Baltimore-based author Jacob Budenz invokes a queer cast of fantastical oddballs making their way in the world we share. From an aspiring magician filled with regrets related to student debt, a deadbeat demon who practices astral projection to compete in speed-eating contests, and a televised semi-psychic who can read the hearts (and late-night snacking proclivities) of viewers, to a baritone octopus passing judgment on human lives from within a coffee shop bathroom, these characters may seem mythical but they are just as mired in the mundane as anyone. 

Mostly set in places or situations that exist as a veil on the contemporary American South, the stories conjure a realm of the extra-ordinary, a respite from the ordinary. They evoke alternate worlds in which “taking a flight” may mean transforming into a peregrine falcon for a trip to Miami to battle a witch in his “subtropical convenience store kingdom”—but it turns out even shapeshifters keep secrets from their fiancées. Indeed, Budenz has a talent for teasing out these incongruities, juxtaposing them with biting humor about the vanity and pettiness that enchanted entities share with their human counterparts, while embracing queerness and examining marginalization and isolation. In this, Tea Leaves has a kinship with Carmen Maria Machado’s collection of genre-defying short fiction, Her Body and Other Parties, and these stories will also appeal to readers of Kelly Link and Neil Gaiman— authors who Budenz cites as influences.

Tea Leaves features a mix of stories that Budenz published in the past decade, as well as previously unpublished work. “I tried to include a handful of shorter, more lyrical pieces, because although a fully cross-genre collection wouldn’t really make sense for me, I publish a lot of poetry too and wanted to make sure to represent something of that sensibility in my first full-length book,” says Budenz. “It became pretty clear early on that this collection wanted to swing between campy and dark, lyrical work. So I just ran with that and tried to arrange it so that pockets of the manuscript explored different subjects, themes, or tones in a way that felt complementary.” 

When it comes to craft, Budenz says, “I almost always start with an image, a scene, or a broad esoteric or whimsical concept and let the story or poem figure out what it wants to be as I’m writing the first draft. In the story ‘Mask for Mask,’ I didn’t really set out to ‘say something’ about toxic masculinity and ageism in gay communities. I wrote that first scene because I thought it was silly—a gay guy doing a swamp tour for a bunch of lizard people disguised as frat bros—and then just played with the dials and knobs, so to speak, until something more meaningful emerged.” 

Budenz adds, “In trying to write queer characters authentically, usually an obstacle a queer person might face in contemporary society floats to the surface very organically as something to raise the stakes of the story, and if I’m lucky, it merges with the supernatural element of the story. It doesn’t always work that way, of course, and I don’t like to force a metaphor if a story just wants to be about queer people experiencing something weird or unnatural that has nothing to do with their gender or sexuality. I try to be careful with the supernatural-element-as-metaphor thing, because I believe that the reader is the authority on what a story means, not the author.” A clever exploration of these questions about authority, interpretation, and gender also shows up in “A Theory of Lampposts,” one of the stories included in Tea Leaves. 

Budenz is a self-described queer author, multi-disciplinary performer, educator, and witch whose work focuses broadly on the intersection of otherness and the otherworldly. Working across mediums, Budenz is able to cross-pollinate: poetry influencing music, performance shaping prose. “I’ve always been obsessed with the sounds of words, and even though I’ve been playing piano my whole life, I didn’t start writing music until well after I’d been writing stories,” Budenz reflects. “And it goes without saying that working as a fiction writer influences the rest of my work as well, especially when it comes to narrative arc and storytelling.” Listening to Moth Broth, Budenz’s psychedelic witch pop band, these connections are never far away in songs like “Fairy Queen” and “Your Toenail (a Spell),” which have lyrics, vocals, and synths by the author. 

Currently developing a new project with Moth Broth, Budenz is also working on fiction that has a more realistic tone, in order to grapple with the topic of predatory behavior and abuse in art scenes. Budenz says, “It’s an ongoing problem in numerous art scenes I’ve inhabited, and although I’m not talking about real people or events, it’s likely to ruffle some feathers. If it winds up being novella length after some revisions, or even just very short-novel length, I might throw in some of the grittier, heavier, or less whimsical short stories that didn’t make it into Tea Leaves.” For now, fans of Tea Leaves can enjoy additional short stories by Budenz in publications including Taco Bell Quarterly and Wussy, as well as the new anthology, The Experiment Will Not Be Bound, and on jakebeearts.com.

In Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds, Bonnie Gordon explores the castrato as a cultural phenomenon and a critical mode of inquiry into the technological relationships that have existed between humans, machines, sounds, and instruments, from early modern to contemporary times. We interviewed the UVA professor of music and co-director of the Sound Justice Lab to find out more about this gorgeously sweeping, multidisciplinary book that is equal parts historical and visionary.

C-VILLE: From Greek myths and Monteverdi to Donna Haraway and Nick Cave, from sound theory and queer theory to posthumanism and the politics of desire, your new book looks at the voice as a technological and theoretical intervention that has shaped history and culture. The book’s scope is immense, each chapter a divergent constellation that reads like it could be a book unto itself despite being deeply connected to the whole. You write that, “The castrato is a critical provocation for asking several questions about the interrelated histories of music, technology, sound, the limits of the human body, and what counts as human.” Could you describe how such expansive research evolved over time?

Bonnie Gordon: I gave my first academic paper on the castrato when I was pregnant with my twins. [Voice Machines] came out after their sophomore year of college. A book that takes so long must take conceptual twists and turns. I thought I was writing a book on castrati in 16th- and 17th-century Roman festivals. And then I took my first archival trip to Rome. I spent hours wandering the streets with little twins in a double stroller. I entertained them by chasing modern Roman spectacles, looking for il Papa, visiting the Swiss Guards, watching fireworks, splashing in fountains. The kids turned me on to the sensory world of Rome and enticed me to think about the city as a vibrant, living space. I found it endlessly fascinating to feel the multiple layers of history; to sit on a yellow plastic bench next to a Baroque church on top of an ancient building. The book had to incorporate those layers, it had to capture the sensory experience of castrati as somewhere between a mythological past and an imagined future.

You also note opportunities for “historiographical reharmonization” around the study of castrati, writing, “Sound in this book is not just acoustical resonance, much less is it just musical or vocal. Rather it constitutes an interface.” Could you discuss how musical metaphors as well as structures like harmonies and refrains influence your work?

The book digs into sound; not just music but the way the world sounded before car alarms and microphones, and it understands sound and listening as central to the way humans experience their worlds. But I don’t think of music-inflected language as metaphor. I’m trained as a classical musician and a traditional music historian, so my mind works in those terms. For example, if you reharmonize a tune you essentially play the same melody with a different chord progression. It can feel totally different and usually it’s a little more gritty; a bit more uncomfortable. This is what I do when I take a text from the 18th century that describes the castrato procedure that has been read as if it is a description of a medical procedure and instead read it as a satire directed against Italians.

But also, I suspect I’m drawn to theoretical approaches that seem musical. The concept of refrain comes from Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. They use the concept of musical refrain to think of history as a series of possible relations to the past. And in some fundamental way the castrato does—in this book at least—turn out to be a figure created by stories or refrains that sound across time and space.

Finally, you write about the effects that life, as well as local and world events, had on your work. You reflect, “I’ve been doing a kind of sonic witnessing… Knowledge production, it turns out, isn’t just what you read; it’s where and with whom you happen to be.” How does this show up in your work?

The most direct answer is that my scholarship pivoted when I started teaching at UVA in 2007, which was the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement. I was organizing a conference at my former institution for a different 400th anniversary—the premiere of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo—and needed a score of a Handel opera. The library search engine sent me to Special Collections, which seemed odd for such a popular tune. Unfamiliarity with a new search engine had led me to a piano reduction from Thomas Jefferson’s music collection. Since that archival accident, I’ve made a practice of collecting sonic snippets that connect the music history I study and teach to local history and the present. The phrase “sonic witnessing” came from my colleague and mentor Deborah Wong. In 2018, I gave a keynote lecture about Zora Neale Hurston. Then, as now, I found myself thinking about the experience of trying to do scholarship in the wake of the horrific white nationalist violence of 2017. I wanted to replace the sounds of white supremacy that I had witnessed with sounds of resistance. Deborah says, “Rather than store away such witness for my personal, liberal humanist interpretation and research, I walk, listen, and record, and then I do it again”. Or to put it differently: It is often easier to study the past than to contemplate the everyday. I try to do both.

“Minds are different and healing them is likewise so,” writes Kay Redfield Jamison in her latest book, Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind. She adds, “It is the healer’s order to restore the mind to soundness: to repair and mend it, to pry it from disease, to reassemble.” These are the seeds from which this book grows, through which Jamison formulates and explores multifaceted questions about society, trauma, recovery, and the people who work tirelessly to help us better understand the full range of human experience, from melancholy to mania. But rather than writing an overly clinical book about mental health and best practices for treatment, Jamison shares a sociocultural history of healing, a celebration of the mind in joy as well as in darkness. 

Influenced by the author’s work as the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as her experiences as a psychiatric patient, Fires in the Dark is deeply personal yet expansive. Building on Jamison’s previous book—An Unquiet Mind, a memoir exploring the author’s experiences with bipolar disorder—Fires in the Dark also touches on her time at the Esalen Institute and undergoing lithium treatment, as well as her corresponding professional journey in psychopathology and psychopharmacology. However, framed by an in-depth examination of the mental health implications of World War I, the book takes a more holistic view of healing practices and the people who serve as guides in the recovery journey, which Jamison describes as “a reflection on healing the mind … an archipelago of thoughts, experiences, and images.” Deeply researched sections celebrate healers across history, attempting to unpack their personal and professional qualities—“A healer should be a refuge”—and approaches to care that resonate over time and reveal something intrinsic about human nature.

The scope is outstanding, ranging from Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1910 to the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019 and covering World War I from inception to armistice, including in-depth accounts of the lives of Sir William Osler, considered a “father of modern medicine,” and W.H.R. Rivers, a doctor, psychologist, and anthropologist whose notable work included treating soldiers for shell shock—what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder. Woven in across sections are quotes, experiences, and insights from household names in psychiatry and poetry—Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, W. B. Yeats, Elizabeth Bishop—alongside names that are likely less familiar, such as psychiatrist Anthony Storr, 19th-century mental illness expert Daniel Hack Tuke, and Scottish poet Douglas Dunn.

Jamison also undertakes a condensed history of psychotherapeutics, from magicians and priests to electroconvulsive therapy and techniques that remain experimental today, such as ketamine and psilocybin. Alongside a list of ancient medicinal remedies that reads like poetry, she examines Greek and Egyptian healing practices, including sleep temples that “served as hospitals, sanctuaries, and centers for purification.” From ancient Egyptian physician Imhotep to Greek god of medicine Asclepius and Greek physician and herbalist Crateuas, Jamison celebrates some of the healers who laid the groundwork for modern medicine, noting, “Ways to heal the mind go back unimaginably far in human history.”

Throughout, the author’s probing attention to history and the human mind makes for a rewarding read. Seemingly disparate topics are united by repeated refrains, connective tissue that coalesces in stories of healing and guidance for those seeking to recover from trauma. “It is difficult to accept, but pain is essential to healing,” is one such refrain that Jamison uses; so too, the idea that work can be a balm to the healing mind. Imagination, creativity, and artistic self-expression are also returned to often, through extensive examples of the congruence of poetry and pathology and also as exemplified in the lives of singer, activist, and athlete Paul Robeson as well as writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Lewis Carroll. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is found in the latter, this celebration of imagination and reading—and the psychotherapeutic benefits of both. Jamison writes, “Both writing and psychotherapy create stories from the material of life. … Whether told to a therapist or created by a writer, stories give form to the inchoate and construct a path out of confusion and pain.” 

Inviting the reader on a journey back to childhood, she skillfully conjures the awe and wonder of children’s literature, complete with quests calling for courageous feats and the lessons learned along the way. From The Once and Future King to Mary Poppins and Peter Pan, she contends, “Writers show us ways to field anxiety, face adversity, and take delight in living.” While the examples used could be updated to reflect more diverse writers and stories, the message resonates nonetheless: Through stories, we come to know ourselves and the world, but we also learn valuable tools for mapping new stories—whether in response to a changing world or healing from the traumas that we experience in it. She argues that stories and imagination are tools for recovery that also teach us how to be more resilient going forward. 

Reflecting the same passion and intensity that she clearly embraced in researching and writing this book—that can be felt with every turn of the page when reading it—Jamison writes, “One should be passionate in dealing with life: grapple with it, know it, and master it. Passion and knowledge protect.”

“It is one thing to understand in theory that our healthcare system is broken … and an entirely different thing to have your hands in the leaky dam of that broken system every day,” writes Sarah DiGregorio, author of Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and Its Power to Change Our World.

Beginning with a historical overview of nursing from prehistoric times to present day, DiGregorio traces the power dynamics between nurses and other practitioners who work with the human body, from the barber-surgeons of the Middle Ages to modern physicians. She details the professionalization of medicine and what she calls the “slow-motion cleaving of the old world of passed-down, empirical expertise from a new world of stricter hierarchy.” DiGregorio also analyzes how health insurance has impacted the field significantly, hastening a decline in focus on the relationship between practitioner and patient in exchange for efficiency and profits. 

Still, in examining the evolution of the field and the social politics surrounding nursing, the author showcases how these histories suggest an alternative human drive, that evolutionarily we might be just as motivated by the urge to care for others as we are by empire-building, domination, and survival of the fittest. Taking Care leans into this optimistic view of our species, profiling individual nurses who showcase some of the best of what it means to be human. 

Two of the nurses included in the book are Mary Seacole, a lesser-known Black contemporary of Florence Nightingale, and Nancy Leftenant-Colon, one of the first Black nurses to serve in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. DiGregorio also profiles Cliff Morrison, the nurse who started the first hospital ward for AIDS patients, which was “Born out of one nurse’s realization that AIDS patients needed end-of-life care they weren’t getting, mainly because of the homophobic stigma and panic around AIDS at the time.” DiGregorio shares how Morrison responded to this need by treating his patients as human beings worthy of respect and care.

L. Synn Stern, a nurse who operates a clinic at an overdose prevention center, does work that exists at the intersection of substance use, homelessness and economic justice, climate change and environmental justice, structural racism, and American politics. As DiGregorio notes, “Much of nursing’s power lies in the one-on-one relationship with a patient, but many of the root causes of illnesses are bigger social problems that can’t be solved individually.” 

It is clear that DiGregorio sought to make something more than the literary equivalent of the applause offered nurses during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Taking Care is an in-depth examination of the field of nursing, and works to deconstruct the misogyny and false binaries of gender roles and physician-nurse hierarchies while also looking at the challenges within types of nursing, including military, hospice, and reproductive care as well as public health and environmental justice, among others. 

And that nightly clapping for COVID-19 nurses? DiGregorio recounts: “Nurses I spoke to recognized that all the hero talk came from a good place, but they also found it wearying. It indicated that the public didn’t really understand the work they did—didn’t really understand it as skilled work, not an immutable identity.” She adds, “We called them our heroes—and we meant it. But this wasn’t really what they needed.” 

In considering what it is that nurses do need, DiGregorio notes, “The big-picture problem is not a lack of nurses, but nurse turnover. … Nurses often suffer what is called a moral injury—when they have more patients than they can safely care for, and when they are forced to participate in a situation that goes against their deepest sense of what is right. This can be so excruciating that it causes them to quit the profession.” She highlights labor unions, like the California Nurses Association, as one strategy to combat the working conditions that undermine nurses in this way.

Despite the diverse challenges, DiGregorio makes the case that nurses are uniquely situated to connect with people and offer intersectional care. “I spoke to nurses who practice in thoughtful, innovative ways that respond to the innate right of every person and community to be valued and cared for,” she says. “The work they do is quieter than the cacophony, but it is powerful, and it is old. If there is a human instinct to tear apart, to hurt and destroy, there is also a human instinct to mend, to care, to reach out.”

More than that, DiGregorio suggests that nurses are also distinctive in their ability to offer hope. “Imagine a world in which the conditions necessary for health are enjoyed by all,” she says. “Nurses have a unique ability to bring such a world to fruition, if they choose it. The rest of us can help.”