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| Title | Author | Publisher | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resurrection Lily | Amy Byer Shainman | Archway Publishing | As Amy Byer Shainman discovers she has inherited a BRCA gene mutation that puts her at high risk of developing certain cancers, she struggles to come to terms with preventively removing her breasts when she does not have a breast cancer diagnosis. Through her experience making decisions about her health, Amy becomes invigorated with purpose and establishes herself as a leading advocate for those with BRCA and other hereditary cancer syndromes, tirelessly working to educate others facing the same daunting reality. Shainman is a BRCA1 gene mutation carrier and a "previvor" - meaning she is a survivor of a predisposition to cancer. In 2010, she had two prophylactic surgeries to reduce her cancer risk drastically; a nipple-sparing, skin-sparing mastectomy with reconstruction and oophorectomy with a hysterectomy.
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| Rx | Rachel Lindsay | Grand Central Publishing | In her early twenties in New York City, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Rachel Lindsay takes a job in advertising in order to secure healthcare coverage for her treatment. But work takes a strange turn when she suddenly finds herself on the other side of the curtain, developing ads for an antidepressant drug. Day after day, she sees her own suffering in the ads she helps to create, trapped in an endless cycle of treatment, insurance, and medication. Overwhelmed by the stress of her professional life and the self-scrutiny it inspires, she begins to destabilize and finds herself hospitalized against her will. In the ward, stripped of the little control over her life she felt she had, she struggles in the midst of doctors, nurses, patients, and endless rules to find a path out of the hospital and this cycle of treatment. This is the author's story of being treated for a mental illness as a commodity and the often unavoidable choice between sanity and happiness. |
| Salt in My Soul | Mallory Smith | Spiegel & Grau | The diaries of a remarkable young woman who was determined to live a meaningful and happy life despite her struggle with cystic fibrosis and a rare superbug - from age 15 to her death at the age of 25. |
| Scenes From My Life | Michael K Williams | Crown | Michael K Williams died on September 6, 2021 of a drug overdose. At the time of his death, Williams had nearly finished a memoir that tells the story of his past while looking to the future, a book that merges his life and his life’s work. Mike, as his friends knew him, was so much more than an actor. In Scenes from My Life, he traces his life in whole, from his childhood in East Flatbush and his early years as a dancer to his battles with addiction and the bar fight that left his face with his distinguishing scar. "All my pain has to count for something. If it isn't fed back into the community, used to help others find a way, then it was all for nothing. I mean, what else are we here for if not each other?" ~ Michael Kenneth Williams. Scenes From My Life, Introduction, xvii New York Times Bestseller | Winner of the NAACP Image Award |
| Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 Years Old | Hendrik Groen | Grand Central Publishing | Delightful and moving, Groen’s novel shares a full year of the eponymous octogenarian’s journal entries, detailing his day-to-day observations, humorous inner monologues, and overall zest for life within a nursing home in Amsterdam. Engaging and hilarious, Hendrik’s diary gives dignity and respect to the elderly often overlooked in popular culture, providing readers a look into the importance of friendship and the realities of the senior care system in modern society. The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen has been translated into over twenty languages. "First published in the Netherlands as 'Attempts to Make Something of Life. The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 Years Old' by Meulenhoff 2014" - Title page verso Review |
| Seek You | Kristen Radtke | Pantheon Books | When Kristen Radtke was in her twenties, she learned that, as her father was growing up, he would crawl onto his roof in rural Wisconsin and send signals out on his ham radio. Those CQ calls were his attempt to reach somebody--anybody--who would respond. In Seek You, Radtke uses this image as her jumping off point into a piercing exploration of loneliness and the ways in which we attempt to feel closer to one another. She looks at the very real current crisis of loneliness through the lenses of gender, violence, technology, and art. Ranging from the invention of the laugh-track to Instagram to Harry Harlow's experiments in which infant monkeys were given inanimate surrogate mothers, Radtke uncovers all she can about how we engage with friends, family, and strangers alike, and what happens--to us and to them--when we disengage. |
| Sensory | Edited by Bex Ollerton | Andrews McMeel Publishing | From artist and curator Bex Ollerton comes an anthology featuring comics from thirty autistic creators about their experiences of living in a world that doesn’t always understand or accept them. Shortlisted for the 2022 Graphic Medicine International Collective (GMIC) Award |
| Severance | Ling Ma | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill with uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers? A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive. Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR | Winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award | Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction | Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award | Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel | A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 | An Indie Next Selection Book Review |
| She Has Her Mother's Laugh | Carl Zimmer | Dutton | Weaving historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world’s best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations. |
| Sick | Porochista Khakpour | Harper Perennial | Sick is Khakpour's arduous, emotional journey--as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems--through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition. Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course--New York, LA, New Mexico, and Germany--as she meditates on both the physical and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. A story about survival, pain, and transformation, Sick is a candid, illuminating narrative of hope and uncertainty, boldly examining the deep impact of illness on one woman's life. Time Magazine's Best Memoirs of 2018 | Boston Globe's 25 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018 | Buzzfeed's 33 Most Exciting New Books | GQ Best Non Fiction Book of 2018 | Bustle’s 28 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2018 list | Nylon’s 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018 | Electric Literature’s 46 Books to Read By Women of Color in 2018 |
