Tess Gunty's Reading List

"Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond, investigates structurally engineered poverty. One of the many memorable facts that this book delineates is that America spends over twice as much on tax benefits for the upper class as it does on national defense."

"I am most often moved by poetry, so I'll name some collections I've adored in recent memory. A Sand Book, by Ariana Reines"

"Good Boys, by Megan Fernandes"

"Calling a Wolf a Wolf, by Kaveh Akbar. Akbar alchemizes pain into beauty line after line, but it was an unexpected evocation of hope that made me cry."

"Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe, makes me enraged about the Sackler family, of course, but more generally about how vulnerable American health care and pharmaceutical systems are to bad actors."

"She's folkloric and supernatural and free. I was studying a book of her paintings recently, enchanted by them all over again."

"I'd also like to read Caliban and the Witch, by Silvia Federici. I think they'd pair well."