The Enigma of Arrival, by V.S. Naipaul - winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali, by Ian Gibson
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
I wanted to give you a morsel to hopefully entice you to consider this read. Debbie Ford writes in her book "The Dark Side of the Light Chasers":
When I was growing up I was told there were two kinds of people in the world: good and bad. Like most children, I worked to show off my good qualities and tried hard to hide my bad ones. I desperately wanted to get rid of all those parts of myself that were unacceptable to my mother, father, sister, and brother. As I got older more people came into my life with all their opinions, and I realized there was even more of myself I had to hide.
I was told, don't be angry, don't be selfish, don't be mean, don't be greedy. Don't be was the message I internalized. I started to believe I was a bad person because I somethimes I was mean and sometimes I got angry and sometimes I wanted all the cookies. ... My dream was to become perfect in order to be loved. So when I didn't brush my teeth, I lied, and when I ate more than my share of cookies, I lied, and when I bit my sister, I lied, and by the time I was three or four I did not even realize I was lying because I had already started lying to myself.
These "bad qualities" became my shadow. And the older I got, the further back I pushed them. ... I could never experience myself as beautiful because I spent so much time trying to hide my ugliness. I could never feel good about my generosity because it was just a mask to cover my greed. I lied about who I was, and I lied to myself about what I was capable of achieving. I lost access to all of who I was.
Because I had worked so hard to shut myself down, I had no patience for other who might be exposing their imperfections. I became intolerant and judgmental. As far as I was concerned, no one was good enough, the world was an awful place, and everyone in it was in trouble. I believed my problems were being imposed on me because I was born into the wrong family, had the wrong friends, the wrong face, the wrong body, lived in the wrong town, and went to the wrong school. ...
The reason for doing this shadow work is to become whole. To end our suffering. To stop hiding from ourselves. One we do this, we can stop hiding from the rest of the world. Our society nurtures the illusion that all the rewards go to the people who are perfect. But many of us are finding out that trying to be perfect is costly. The consequences of emulating the "perfect person" can eat away at us, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. ... They were raised to put themselves last because that is what good people do. The hardest thing for them is to break free from this conditioning to find out who they really are. ...
Within ourselves,we possess every trait and its polar opposite, every human emotion and impulse. We have to uncover, own, and embrace all of who we are. ...
If you believe you are weak, then you must seek out its opposite, and find your strength. If you are ruled by fear you must go within and find your courage. If you are a victim you must find the victimizer inside you. ... When you say "I am that" to the deepest, darkest aspect of yourself, then you can reach true enlightenment.
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.