October 1, 2024

Finding the right book at the right time can transform your life or your organization. We help you discover your next great read by showcasing four recently released titles each week.

The books are chosen by Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team: Dylan Schleicher, Gabbi Cisneros, and Jasmine Gonzalez. (Book descriptions are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted.)

This week, our choices are:

Jasmine’s pick: Budding Lotus in the West: Buddhism from an Immigrant's Feminist Perspective by Nhi Yến Đỗ Trần, Broadleaf Books

Born into a family legacy of Buddhist spirituality in Việt Nam, Trần immigrated to the US at age ten. Budding Lotus in the West follows her journey and unveils the complexities of how Buddhist teachings are used in America. With raw authenticity, Trần shares personal anecdotes, weaving together the mosaic of her own experiences with Buddhism, and provides readers with a fundamental understanding of key Buddhist concepts and traditions. Trần examines the interplay between ancient wisdom and contemporary challenges, inviting spiritual seekers and curious minds to engage critically with Buddhism in a way that resonates with contemporary life.

For example, what would the Buddha say about abortion, gun, and LGBTQIA+ rights? Or about prejudice, discrimination, and gender equality? How can practitioners more skillfully navigate romance in the sangha community? Whether you are a longtime Buddhist practitioner or just beginning to explore the religion, Budding Lotus in the West offers a critical examination, providing wisdom, inspiration, and a path toward a more balanced and inclusive understanding of Buddhism in the modern world.

Sally’s pick: Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City by Alex Hannaford, Dey Street Books 

Austin isn’t what it used to be.

This is a common sentiment amongst locals, offered with the same confused—and often disappointed—tone familiar to residents of Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco, where rapid growth and expansion have led to an urban identity crisis. Like those cities, Austin is known for its unique qualities: a thriving live music scene and housing affordability that historically made it a compelling home for creatives and self-described weirdos to roost. But now, as Big Tech infiltrates and climate change looms, Austin has become less familiar—and far less affordable.

An exploration of the beloved city’s evolution, Lost in Austin also serves as a critical exploration of the transformation that has befallen one of America’s most beloved cities—and serves as a warning for what the homogenization of cities means for American urban identity. With a journalist’s perspective and the heart of an Austinite, Alex Hannaford delves into the consequences of the city’s rapid growth in chapters that chronicle the major movements permanently altering the city: a vanishing music scene, soaring property values, and the encroachment of major industry. Through keen reportage and extensive interviews, Lost in Austin unveils the toll of unchecked growth and the city’s shift from its rebellious spirit to commercialization.

Through those stories—vibrant, colorful, and clearly full of love for this city—Hannaford raises a crucial question: How do American cities, once celebrated for their unique values, became casualties of their own rapid growth and success? And can they ever return to what they once were?

Dylan’s pick: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates, One World

Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.

The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist—and named for Nubian pharaoh—Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the "steampunk" city of "old traditions and new machinery," meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African American politics. But everywhere he goes he feels as if he's in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and touches the ocean that carried his ancestors away in chains—and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

Back in the USA he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's own books and discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the stories they discovered in the "racial reckoning" of 2020o. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths and stories of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over the its public squares.

In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians--the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him--and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country's most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world--and our own souls-- and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

Gabbi’s pick: My Life: Growing Up Native in America edited by IllumiNative, MTV Books

With heart, pathos, humor, and insight, twenty renowned writers, performers, athletes, and activists explore what it means to be Native American today. Through a series of essays and poems, these luminaries give voice to their individual experiences while shedding light on the depth and complexity of modern Native American identity, resiliency, and joy.

The topics are as fascinating and diverse as the creators. From Mato Wayuhi, award-winning composer of Reservation Dogs, honoring a friend who believed in his talent to New York Times bestselling author Angeline Boulley exploring what it means to feel Native enough, these entries are not only an exploration of community, they are also a call for a more just and equitable world, and a road map toward a brighter future.

Edited by IllumiNative, an organization dedicated to amplifying contemporary Native voices, My Life: Growing Up Native in America features contributions from Angeline Boulley, Philip J. Deloria, Eric Gansworth, Kimberly Guerrero, Somah Haaland, Madison Hammond, Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, Trudie Jackson, Princess Daazhraii Johnson, Lady Shug, Ahsaki Baa LaFrance-Chachere, Taietsarón:sere Leclaire, Cece Meadows, Sherri Mitchell, Charlie Amaya Scott, Kara Roselle Smith, Vera Starbard, Dash Turner, Crystal Wahpepah, and Mato Wayuhi.