reading list
Essays, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry relating to the body, illness, pain, disability, trauma, and more.
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottesa Moshfegh
Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson
I Choose Elena by Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Sick by Porochista Khakpour
Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth
Pain Woman Takes Your Keys by Sonya Huber
Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin
Crippled by Frances Ryan
Your Voice In My Head by Emma Forrest
Invisible by Michele Lent Hirsch
Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbery
Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer
Health Justice Now by Timothy Faust
The Undying by Anne Boyer
Kindling by Aurora Levins Morales
Exposure by Olivia Sudjic
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Regarding The pain of Others by Susan Sontag
Disability Aesthetics by Tobin Anthony Siebers
Bodyminds reimagined by Sami Schalk
What Her Body Thought by Susan Griffin
The Rejected Body by Susan Wendell
When The Sick Rule The World by Dodie Bellamy
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Criptiques edited by Caitlin Wood
Brilliant Imperfection by Eli Clare
Notes to Self by Emilie Pine
Happening by Annie Ernaux
The Pretty One by Keah Maria
Sick Woman Theory by Johanna Hedva
Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag
Life in the sick-room by Harriet Martineau
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
Sanatorium by Abi Palmer
Inferno by Catherine Cho
The State of Me by Nasim Marie Jafry
Ask Me About My Uterus by Abby Norman
Hunger by Roxane Gay
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas