On Our Bookshelf: Literature by Our Workshop Leaders

Connection with the totality of our bodies, our cultures, and our authentic selves (“as much of our authentic selves as we are able to feel into”) means grappling with lived experience and “examining how our culture affects our bodies.” Kuhn, a somacultural sex therapist and sexuality educator, will lead a workshop on this embodied practice in January. His book is a supportive primer for upcoming participants and everyone in need of a therapeutic and affirming somacultural perspective. In his immediate and compelling style, Kuhn blends research, history, and theory with mindfulness, exercises, and personal narratives — including his own personal moving story as a Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer person. The end result is the rarest of self-help books: a work that is informative yet intimate and simultaneously revelatory and comforting, as if crafted specifically for each reader by a personal friend guiding them toward liberation.

With decades of contemplative leadership experience, Dr. Majied presents Buddhism and Black contemplative traditions together to reveal their shared insights and develop compassion. Though the idea of confronting injustice while embracing joy may appear contradictory, Joyfully Just is not working toward a “superficial pleasure” but rather “the joy that arises when we use our meditative practices to pause and look at the suffering that injustice has caused in our own lives and in the lives of others,” writes Majied. “In that pause we can experience the joy of clarity, which is a precursor to the joy of healing.” During Black History Month, the Buddhist mental health therapist will lead a workshop that explores different Black cultural and spiritual practices that engage with dialect and language, literature and poetry, dance and communicative kinesics, visual arts, and music to uncover the “joy in both the triumphs and the sufferings of our lives.”

As explained in the introduction: “This book is not about what makes these couples special, because, as they would all acknowledge, they are not, but about what has enabled them to create the lives together that they have.” If you can remember When Harry Met Sally, picture the interstitial short interviews of older couples regaling the camera with “meet-cute” stories. Here are more meaningful versions to help you form your own long-lasting bond. Over two years, the Blooms interviewed over 50 blissful couples married an average of thirty-one years. Secrets of Great Marriages focuses on 27 pairs — one chapter for each — to form a celebration of marriage. Not that it’s easy! “None of them are staying in marriage for comfort and security. They are seeking growth and consciousness. They are willing to take chances. They are brave in their intimacy with each other.” (Those ready to find greater intimacy can sign up for Linda and Charlie’s upcoming workshop, Love, Sex, and Intimacy for Individuals and Couples, starting this February.)

These comedic “stranger in a strange land” essays about the author’s experiences as an Iranian immigrant were first published twenty years ago, but they remain just as engaging and laugh-out-loud funny as ever. Dumas’ breakout first book, followed by Laughing Without an Accent and her middle-grade novel, It Ain't So Awful, Falafel, maintains a lighthearted tone and treats its characters with warmth and playfulness. The standout star, her wise father, is a true believer in both Disneyland and the American Dream who meets challenges with optimism — even when facing racism in the wake of the Iranian Hostage crisis or his own young daughter, outraged over his forbidden love of ham: “It’s not what we eat or don’t eat that makes us good people; it’s how we treat one another.” The acclaimed humorist will teach a series of oral storytelling exercises “passed down through generations from the historic city of Shushtar” in her upcoming workshop, Find Your Voice and Reconnect with the Storyteller Within.