Maria's Critical Reads

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd: 

This book taught me to think critically about the world by first thinking critically about my own life and my own experience. Kidd's biographical account of her feminine spiritual awakening resonated with my own experience, and taught me that reading can unlock entire parts of your experience that have been dying to surface, but have never had the chance. This book taught me to question authority and all that I hold sacred, while thinking deeply about the meaning of God-talk and the impact of language on the psyche. 

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander:

The publicity around this book pretty much speaks for itself. If anything, Alexander's book has reminded me to think critically about history-- because it is never merely something that lives in the past. We are creating history now, we are repeating history now, we are shaping the world our children will live in while we are being shaped by the world our parents lived in.

The Struggle Is One by Mev Puleo:

Puleo's work has helped me to think critically about compassion: where it comes from, what it looks like, and what it implores us to do once we've experienced it with someone whose experience is different from our own.