Volume 267
Issue 44
11/02/2020
Why write a self-help book in the first person? Podcast host and motivational speaker Luvvie Ajayi Jones offers an answer, explaining why her next book, Professional Troublemaker, includes confessional details—the mundane, such as her fear of bugs, and the profound, including her fear of calling herself a writer.
“We have to be able to be vulnerable ourselves, to show our own mistakes,” Jones says. “It’s necessary to not position yourself as an expert or a perfect person. That’s unrelatable. I have to be willing to tell my own truths as I’m asking other people to do the same.”
As a result, Jones says, her book conveys an empathetic message: “The reason why I know to tell you this is because this is something I went through myself.” It’s one among several new titles that use the personal to address the universal.
Getting to Center
Grace, a dancer and Instagrammer (83,000 followers), reflects on her divorce, several cross-country moves, and her sobriety, among other topics, and offers suggestions for readers who are feeling off balance. The book, which PW’s review called an “inviting guide,” builds on the themes that Grace explored in her debut, 2018’s How to Not Always Be Working, such as resilience and self-love.
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Happy, Not Perfect
In this companion to Jamie’s podcast and mindfulness app of the same name, she relates her struggles to overcome perfectionism and find her life’s purpose. Sharing what she learned from consulting neuroscientists and other experts, the author, an Instagram influencer with 94,000 followers, suggests strategies—her “flexy thoughts” approach—for addressing emotional triggers and improving mental health.
My Inner Sky
Andrew debuted in 2018 with Am I There Yet?, a book of essays and artwork that has since sold 52,000 print copies. She divides the work in her second collection by theme: twilight, golden hour, night, and dawn. Darkness and light imagery is common across literature, cultures, and faiths; this illustrated memoir is a colorful, millennial take by an Instagrammer with 1.1 million followers.
Professional Troublemaker
Mixing comedy, confession, and a social justice ethos, Jones follows 2016’s I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual, which has sold 66,000 print copies, with a book about facing fear. Taking inspiration from her grandmother, she exhorts readers—many of whom are likely to be among her 322,000 Instagram followers—to address whatever is keeping them from working toward lasting social change.
This One Wild and Precious Life
Wilson follows 2018’s First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, a memoir about anxiety that sold 52,000 print copies, with an examination of her experience of the loneliness epidemic. Structuring the new book around a series of hikes she took over the course of several years, including trekking the Sierra Nevada and forest bathing in Japan, Wilson interviews mental health experts and philosophers and encourages readers to embrace radical solitude as a spiritual journey. It adds up to a “vibrant take on how to build a more joyful existence and sustainable world,” PW’s review said.
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