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Compiling a Grief Syllabus

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Compiling a Grief Syllabus

Currently mourning: the ability to sleep

Penny Zang
Apr 13, 2023
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Compiling a Grief Syllabus

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Last time: The Most Inspiring Things I’ve Digested This Week

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Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

“The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.” —Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Oh, I have been distracted. Unfocused, daydreamy, anxious. Sending my kid (and myself) to school with clothes inside out and forgetful as I stand in the sliver of refrigerator light, unsure what I needed in the first place.

But I’m pretty sure this happens to me at regular intervals. Instead of seasonal allergies, I get seasonal distraction.

Now would be a good time to let you know that writing news is coming (medium-sized news at least), updates I’ll share at first behind a paywall, and if you wanted to subscribe and support the writing going on over here, I’d appreciate it more than I can express in words (though I’ll try because I’m a writer).

I’m moving my books around at home and realized that there are a lot of books with ghosts (kinda on purpose) and a lot of books filled grief (not always on purpose). I didn’t mean to start creating a Grief Syllabus, really a reading list of books with ghosts and mourning, but here we are.

And my list is just getting started. I’m hoping with suggestions in the comments, I can update this list even more.

Note: I’m a Bookshop.org affiliate and may earn a small commission if you purchase through my book links.

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Ghosts and Grief: An Ongoing Mourning Pages Reading List

This is an incomplete list of books that came to mind when I immediately thought about mourning, not necessarily how-to manuals (there are many of those out there), but books that especially confront the act of mourning either in fiction of non-fiction.

  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

  • Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

  • Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  • In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom

  • Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

  • The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt

  • Lost & Found : Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz

  • Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

What other books about mourning come to mind for you? Bonus points for ghosts, both literal and figurative.

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Compiling a Grief Syllabus

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Compiling a Grief Syllabus

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Joanne Messman
Apr 13Liked by Penny Zang

A memoir that immediately comes to mind for your grief syllabus is A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken.

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Julie A Jordan Scott
Writes Belonging To Your Highest Self:…
Apr 13Liked by Penny Zang

While many don't think it is about grief, I found "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" to be allllll about grief. Also "Grief is Love" (memoir) by Marisa Renee Lee. "The Taste of Ginger" by Mansi Shah. "Golden Girl" by Elin Hilderbrand. I feel like most novels I have read lately have elements of grief within them.

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