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| photo: Judith Rae | |
Karen Brody is the author of Daring to Rest: Reclaim Your Power with Yoga Nidra Rest Meditation (Sounds True, November 1, 2017). She's also a speaker and the founder of Daringtorest.com, a company offering yoga nidra meditation for women via downloadable products and training. Her work has been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, and she's a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. She's also a playwright.
On your nightstand now:
On the top is For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. I'm always looking back at this one, reminding myself of why when I think I'm crazy, there's often a historical thread women have been brainwashed to think that this is true. This book reminds me that my crazy is normal. I also keep Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu's The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World in my stack of books to remind me of how to forgive when I really can't let the hurt go. I'm trying to work my way through Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beautiful novel Americanah. Love her prose and everything she stands for. And Brené Brown's Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone is about to go on my nightstand. Can't put it down.
Favorite book when you were a child:
All of Judy Blume's books. Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret?, Forever and It's Not the End of the World. They reminded me that everything I felt was okay, and they made me feel proud to be a girl.
Your top five authors:
Abraham Verghese, Anne Lamott, Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou and Pema Chödrön. I'd pay big money to have tea with them--and I'd head up to heaven to meet Maya Angelou in a second.
Book you've faked reading:
I'm dyslexic so just about every book in high school and college I had to fake read or read the Cliffs Notes to get through it in time. I read Shakespeare this way. (Actually, I love Shakespeare, but reading it feels like pure torture because in every line I want to have a discussion on meaning and metaphor. And sometimes I'm just plain lost.)
Book you're an evangelist for:
Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming and Awakening by Dr. Rubin Naiman. This is one of the most thoughtful books I've read; it's well-researched and just makes sense. If we all read and applied Naiman's ideas on rest and rhythm, I think we'd solve our exhausting quest for happiness and cut down on the number of sleep, depression and anxiety medication most of America is on.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Never bought a book for the cover. Content over cover--always.
Book you hid from your parents:
My parents were so open, they probably hid books from me. I guess Forever by Judy Blume went into a drawer, just because it was the first book I read about having an orgasm, and that felt risky.
Book that changed your life:
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman shook me to my core. If you ever want to understand how a woman is driven crazy and women's complicated history with rest, then read this.
I was also deeply changed by the stories in Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Whenever I feel exhausted and defeated, I reread her "Vasilisa" story, and it reminds me how important it is for women to stay connected to our wild, intuitive nature. Without her, a part of us dies.
Favorite line from a book:
Only one? I love this quote from Marion Woodman and Jill Mellick's Coming Home to Myself: Reflections for Nurturing a Woman's Body & Soul:
"I'm brave.
Brave also means
Being nervous."
Woodman is a master at inviting us to hold what she calls "the tension of the opposites" in our lives. This is why I love yoga nidra meditation so much--it plays with opposites and by doing so, you wake up and begin living in the "and/both" instead of the "either/or."
Five books you'll never part with:
My nervous system feels like it needs to be surrounded by all my books; they're family, so I never want to part with any. But if I had to choose, these are top selections you'd have to fight me for:
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser. This book reminds me how breakdown can lead to breakthroughs.
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott. I buy this book and a bottle of water for every new mom. Anne Lamott's talent to tell the raw truth about parenting is refreshing and bold.
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. Ridiculously inspiring and makes me want to be a better human. His life is a manual for fighting oppression.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön. This one is often on my nightstand. It's my bible for just about every moment in life--a health crisis, having a baby and birthing a business.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone. Gorgeous milky prose. Powerful story. Made me feel intimate with Ethiopian culture and the human experience.
Books you could read over and over again:
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Required feminist reading.
Anything by Abraham Verghese. Cutting for Stone, The Tennis Partner and My Own Country: A Doctor's Story. He's my writer-crush.
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her prose is like butter, and this story is so powerfully told. Couldn't put it down.
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (and the entire trilogy). Felt as if I was transported to Egypt.
I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann. Great storytelling, and full of bravery. A modern Out of Africa.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cannot Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Felt like Cain wrote this for me and all the other people who have been told that they're "too sensitive" or "shy," but deep down felt like a quiet leader.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Ridiculously imaginative. I want Selznick's storytelling talent. Please.
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. Breathtaking. I can't wait to read her new nonfiction, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story.