What I Read in 2021

How has Western medicine failed women? How have longstanding (though now perhaps more concealed) ideas about women being “malformed men” or weaker or more emotional impacted how women’s health has been treated, mistreated, or ignored? Cleghorn’s history of medical sexism addresses these questions. If you haven’t been angry about hysteria or asylums or lobotomies or women only getting decent medical care when they’re pregnant (and even then it’s questionable), well, gear up.

Originally published in 1990, The Beauty Myth is a feminist classic that examines beauty standards of the 80s through the lens of backlash. Wolf’s thesis: Now that women had more equal economic and political rights with men thanks to the women’s liberation movement, the patriarchy reacted by weaponizing beauty and creating an impossible ideal for women to embody in order to be considered “true” women. “The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically,” Wolf writes.

This year, a poet and artist I’ve followed online for probably a decade publicly denounced Christianity. This was someone I’d learned a lot from and related to as a Christian creative who enjoys digging into the Bible but also struggles with doubt from time to time. His departure from the faith affected me way more than I expected. At the same time, I’ve seen friends from college lambast Christianity (specifically American evangelicalism) and say truly awful things about Christians. Even though I know where they stand, every time I see another post I wince and at times I’m brought to tears.

How does God actually think of me? Is he just angry all the time?

A lot of Christians (and as a result, the people around them) view God as an angry, bearded Zeus-like character who we’re just lucky isn’t striking everyone dead all the time. But is that what God is actually like? In his book, Ortlund introduces us to the “gentle and lowly” heart of Jesus. Drawing from scripture and the reflections of Puritans, he shows us how kindness and humility are central to who God is.

Ever since Jethani spoke in chapel my freshman year of college, this book has been on my list. With is all about changing the paradigm of how we relate to God. Most people, Jethani says, relate to God through these prepositions: above, under, for, from. But God doesn’t want us to live for, from, above, or under him — he wants us to live, or walk, with him. Thanks to that freshman year chapel message, I was already familiar with the concepts of this book, but I appreciated how Jethani fleshed out his ideas. It’s so easy to fall into one of the other prepositional postures, when God’s desire truly is to be with us.

When Jesus preached “the gospel”, what exactly did he preach? This is a question I’d asked internally for a long time. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — the New Testament books collectively referred to as “the gospels” — are some of the hardest biblical books for me to understand. And the quick gospel definition I was taught as a kid didn’t make it any easier.

This book puts into words much of what I’ve learned over the last several years as I’ve dug into scripture on my own in an attempt to answer that question.

Is your Christian faith just a set of theological ideas, or does it influence the way you live your everyday life?

Villodas challenges his readers to match their inner and outer lives to their vocal confession. This book couples well with Jon Tyson’s Beautiful Resistance, which I read last year. Both are concerned with the spiritual formation of Christians, or in other words, who we’re becoming.

Marriage in scripture is set forth as a picture of how Christ relates to his church. His commitment to her is profound; he gives himself for her; he places her wellbeing before his own. But human marriage more often than not fails to adequately reflect Christ’s “gentle and lowly” posture toward his bride. I read this toward the beginning of the year, so I don’t remember it too well, but I remember appreciating how the Kellers’ fleshed out the, well, meaning of marriage. I hold a more egalitarian ideal than I’ve seen Tim Keller describe in other contexts, but I was pleased to see that my ideals really aren’t that different from what’s set forth in this book.

Where to start with this one? Barr is a medieval historian and baptist pastor’s wife whose historical research led her to reconsider the hyper-complementarian views of her former church where not only were women not allowed to teach men, but they weren’t allowed to teach 14-year-old boys. In this book, Barr traces the historical origins of so-called biblical womanhood — that narrow ideal of a “meek and quiet” woman who doesn’t speak in church or hold authority over men — to show that it’s not actually biblical, but a cultural ideal that’s been projected onto scripture and used to harm women.

This had been on my list for a while when I bought it last summer. The book is a good introduction to the history of the American church’s complicity with racism — introduction being the key word. It’s brief and covers broad swaths of history in just a couple hundred pages, so if you’re serious about learning more of this vein of history, The Color of Compromise provides a good foundational layer for you to build on. I would pair this with Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror, one of my top reads from last year.

The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr

A short story collection from the author of All the Light We Cannot See, The Shell Collector provided a much-needed dose of lyrical language. I found this book in a Little Free Library and read it over the month of November. Doerr is a fantastic writer.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I read this after watching a documentary about Atwood. I have no interest in watching the TV series because the concept is disturbing, but I appreciate Atwood’s motivations in writing it. Every awful thing that happens to women in the society Atwood created has happened in our real world somewhere at some point in history, much of it not too long ago. This isn’t really an enjoyable read, but it’s masterfully written.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

This book has been living with me for at least six years now, maybe longer, so I thought it was time for a reread. You follow a few different perspectives, each written in their own unique voice, some stream-of-consciousness, and everything comes together eventually. I love this approach to storytelling (also seen in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer).

This tome is a treasure. 587 pages, and it’s only the first of a three-volume set. I found the first two volumes at Tattered Cover in Denver last year and purchased the third online. I spent most of the spring and early summer reading this one. ER’s early life is not what I expected. Her father was an alcoholic whose habit destroyed his life. Her mother disregarded her and died when ER was 8. ER’s childhood was fraught by instability with the one bright spot being her education in London.

Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, edited by Ann Hood

This collection of essays about knitting was a super cozy read and the partial inspiration for my second handmade sweater. It also inspired me to write more about crafts, because I love crafts and we need more to read that doesn’t carry the whole weight of the world.

Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul by Barbara Reynolds

I got curious about Dorothy L. Sayers after my pastor quoted her a few times on Sunday mornings, so I found this biography and promptly started reading. I relate to her on a number of levels and would like to find a more deeply researched biography that doesn’t just quote her novels as if they’re directly referencing her life. Something that was unexpected: Sayers had a son out of wedlock who may have never known she was more than his “aunt”.

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich

A text from a college class that I kept because I enjoyed it so much, The Solace of Open Spaces is about the author’s life on the range in Wyoming. Beautiful language. Another reread.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

One of the first books I read this year, this true story was a ride. It’s the rare nonfiction book that reads like a novel while communicating a wealth of information. Featuring: scandals of science, reporting escapades, and everyday, down-to-earth characters that feel like they could live next door.