2017 Bestsellers & Collective Picks
It comes as no surprise that our co-operative's best selling titles from 2017 reflected the turbulent social and political atmosphere of a year that felt conflictual, dangerous, and altogether unprecedented. Our readers reached for titles that drew from history (real and imaginal) to make sense of the world around them. And while dystopian fiction captured the headlines (think Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and George Orwell's 1984), our favorite books were hopeful, healing, and unabashedly resistant.
Beyond the politics of "non-compliance," but certainly intersecting it, another theme emerged from our literary year: the Witch. The Feminist Press' Witches, Midwives, and Nurses was our most selling title by a landslide. With black-robed covens hexing Trump's inauguration, local activists throwing spooky dance party fundraisers, and brujxs showing up everywhere in pop culture, witchcraft may finally have made the move from the margins to the mainstream.
An ‘unabashedly partisan’ history of militant antifascism in Europe and the United States, as well as strategies for resistance during the Trump presidency and beyond. Based on interviews with 61 current and former antifascists from 17 countries… Bray’s arguments are incisive and cohesive, and his consistent refusal to back down from principle makes the book a crucial intervention in our political moment.
– Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of The End of San Francisco
If you have ever listened to Neil deGrasse Tyson speak, you will know one thing about him: he is really good at blowing your mind… NDT has a gift for communicating complex ideas and theories in a way that is not only understandable, but interesting. This is the perfect book to dip in and out of to give your brain some space to absorb the baffling discoveries within.
– Sophia Khan, BookRiot.com
Okorafor's storytelling is vivid and thorough, and no doubt that the spot on writing of the outsider experience is personal to her. Underneath the action and advanced technologies, this story is the equivalent of an out of body, sci-fi experience in regards to black womanhood. She introduces a beautiful world of space and technology through the eyes of an amazing young woman and does not shy away from the complexities of human emotions or experiences.
– Antoinette Scully, BlackAndBookish.com
Smith, a contemplative writer of gratitude and reverence who names her muses in poems, memoirs, and songs, deepens her inquiry into the nature of inspiration in this slender, trenchant volume, the first in Yale's Why I Write series... Gracefully improvisational, as always, Smith offers an unusually poetic, mystical, and transfixing perspective on the mystery of literary creation.
– Donna Seaman, Booklist
A truly unique and beautifully written story. The prose tilts toward poetry and the narrative feels dreamlike at times, yet the emotions and relationships in this book ring so true and feel so raw. It's impossible not to fall in love with the characters in this vivid, imaginative, trans coming-of-age story!
With a blend of believable characters, an unpredictable story-line, and a fantastical-demonic backdrop – what's not to love? This page-turner, written by an Asheville-based author, will leave whomever you gift it to with a story they can keep coming back to. And it's got anarcho-punks in it. Double-win!
Emil Ferris’s debut graphic novel, illustrates the empowering subversiveness of horror, especially for queer people. The book tells the story of Karen Reyes, a ten-year-old half-Mexican tomboy who is obsessed with horror films and detective comics… an incredibly complex book, and will doubtlessly be considered a groundbreaking classic right alongside Fun Home and Persepolis.
– Michelle Hart, Autostraddle
Gaiman’s characteristically limpid, quick-running prose keeps the dramatic impetus of the medieval texts, if not their rough-hewn quality. His telling of the tales is for children and adults alike, and this is both right and wise, it being the property of genuine myth to be accessible on many levels.
– Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Dispossessed
Exciting, full of incredible technology, and powered by a dark historical mystery. It's something you can read to escape, or to ponder philosophical questions in our own world. In short, it's that rare series that appeals to a love of adventure, and to the urge to reflect on the unseen forces that drive our civilizations.
– Annalee Newitz, author of Autonomous
The style of the sun and her flowers combines short poems of a few lines with longer narratives, recounting issues such as the beauty found in her parents’ broken English and self-reclamation after sexual abuse… A literary revolutionary, fighting against oppression through fragmentation and the dismantling of taboo.
– Juliet Garcia, The Oxford Student
Like unexpectedly getting knocked over by a steamroller. We are accustomed to euphemisms, taking around issues, and rarely being honest about them because reality is too often painful. We understand that Ta-Nehisi Coates’ unvarnished picture of America’s cancer has threatened to destroy us in the past. We are less comfortable admitting that the disease still resides within us, that our future is just as precarious as the past.
– Charles R. Larson, Professor Emeritusof Literature at American University
Raw and truthful, painfully funny, inspiring of outrage, and alive with the wonder and magic of a feminist awakening. One single mom becoming woke, struggling, and triumphing on her own outsider terms, We Were Witches is a new feminist classic, penned by one the culture’s strongest authors at her most experimental and personal.
– Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave