Book picks similar to
Semicolon ; by McKayla DeBonis


poetry
favorites
non-fiction
mental-health

For When You Feel Like Giving Up


Alyssa Karr - 2018
    Alyssa Karr's beautiful words fill the reader with inspiration and hope to turn darkness into light.

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Poems


Warsan Shire - 2022
    Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women, and teenage girls. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl.The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.

Tell Me Where It Hurts: Poems


J.R. Rogue - 2016
    Rogue is a poetic genius... Her style and voice is striking, familiar, foreign, unsettling, and hypnotic all at once.” —Award-Winning Author and Poet, Sophia Hanson“I can feel it in my roots;I gave birth, in a nightmare, to unlovable things.They breed in my belly; tiny birthdays, every day.I am the undead mother to every single bitof black in this skin prisonmy lovers have choked on.”Goodreads Choice Nominated poet J.R. Rogue’s second poetry collection Tell Me Where It Hurts is a raw, heartbreaking, and honest glimpse into the demons she has faced in her life.Centering on mental health awareness and the strength to survive childhood abuse, the bestselling author brings to light many of the silent and brutal struggles men and women face.

Note to Self


Connor Franta - 2017
    Exploring his past with humor and astounding insight, Connor reminded his fans of why they first fell in love with him on YouTube—and revealed to newcomers how he relates to his millions of dedicated followers.Now, two years later, Connor is ready to bring to light a side of himself he’s rarely shown on or off camera. In this diary-like look at his life since A Work In Progress, Connor talks about his battles with clinical depression, social anxiety, self-love, and acceptance; his desire to maintain an authentic self in a world that values shares and likes over true connections; his struggles with love and loss; and his renewed efforts to be in the moment—with others and himself.Told through short essays, letters to his past and future selves, poetry, and original photography, Note to Self is a raw, in-the-moment look at the fascinating interior life of a young creator turning inward in order to move forward.

I Will Look For You Among The Stars


Kamala Kennedy - 2017
    I Will Look For You Among The Stars is a poetry collection about love, loss, and grief- the pain of losing people you can never get back.

sugar, honey, ice & tea


C.R. Elliott - 2019
    Divided into four chapters, the book deals with the struggles of pain and healing of wounds of all sorts, finding sweetness in all the bitterness along the way. Sugar, honey, ice & tea takes readers on a journey deep into the dark corners where struggle becomes strength and pushes through all the emptiness until it reaches the light.

The Tradition


Jericho Brown - 2019
    Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we’ve become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive. Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown’s mastery, and his invention of the duplex―a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues―testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.

Black Girl, Call Home


Jasmine Mans - 2021
    With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

Idiot Verse


Keaton Henson - 2015
    they were written in the late hours of the last 3 years of his life, in hotel rooms, park benches and various apartments. they are stories of lost love, touring, reclusion and new found renown.

Averno


Louise Glück - 2006
    That place gives its name to Louise Glück's tenth collection: in a landscape turned irretrievably to winter, it is a gate or passageway that invites traffic between worlds while at the same time resisting their reconciliation. Averno is an extended lamentation, its long, restless poems no less spellbinding for being without conventional resoltution or consolation, no less ravishing for being savage, grief-stricken. What Averno provides is not a map to a point of arrival or departure, but a diagram of where we are, the harrowing, enduring present.Averno is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.

the Chaos inside Me


Elisabet Salas - 2018
    It is a story about owning the emotions that live inside the heart and the head. It is the cathartic experience of pain and loss but also the bittersweet feelings of joy and the complexity of beauty. Elisabet expresses the unraveling of herself and the complexity of emotions that stemmed from heartache, her own mental health and the struggles of growing up and into a world with no precedence for a first generation child. This is the accumulation of three years of tears and long nights figuring out that chaos isn't always a bad thing.

The Rose That Grew from Concrete


Tupac Shakur - 1999
    This collection of more than 100 poems that honestly and artfully confront topics ranging from poverty and motherhood to Van Gogh and Mandela is presented in Tupac Shakur's own handwriting on one side of the page, with a typed version on the opposite side.

All the Letters I Should Have Sent


Rania Naim - 2018
     To the ones who broke our hearts and the ones that got away. To the ones who loved us and the ones who healed us. To the ones who made us ask important questions and the ones who gave us the answers. To all the people who once came into our lives and left an impact, left a mark or left a scar. This book is for you.

Born to Love, Cursed to Feel


Samantha King - 2016
    Sin comes a new voice, Samantha King’s raw, relatable poetry both celebrates love and mourns the human “curse to feel.” Her verse transports readers to the most private reaches of love and longing. Born to Love, Cursed to Feel is about love—the good, the bad, and the confusing. It touches on morals and how when emotions are involved it’s not as black and white. The poetry is frequently written in a narrative manner that evocatively pulls you in and makes you feel. This book is about falling in love, bad decisions, and ultimately growth. The essence of it all is to show that no matter how far one falls all the mistakes don’t have to be what defines them.

[Dis]Connected: Poems and Stories of Connection and Otherwise


Michelle HalketYena Sharma Purmasir - 2018
    Few know this better than the poets who have risen to the top of their trade by sharing their emotion, opinion and art with millions of fans.Combining the poetic forces of some of today’s most popular and confessional poets, this book presents poems and short stories about connection wrapped up in a most unique exercise in creative writing. Follow along as your favorite poets connect with each other; offering their poetry to the next poet who tells a story based on the concept presented to them. With poetry, stories and art, [Dis]Connected is a mixed media presentation of connection and collaboration.