A Literary Prescription for

Bullying

For anyone who has been made to feel small — and the writers who insist, gently and fiercely, that you were never the problem.

Being bullied — at school, at work, online, or inside a family — can leave a mark that outlasts the words by years. It chips at your sense of worth and can trick you into believing the cruelty was somehow deserved. It was not. The books, poems and words gathered here are here to help you separate what was done to you from who you are, to rebuild your boundaries and your voice, and to remind you that the shame belongs to the person who handed it out — never to you. If someone is hurting you right now, please tell a person you trust; you should not have to carry this alone.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

Books for rebuilding worth and boundaries after cruelty, and stories — for younger readers especially — that turn being an outsider into something survivable, even beautiful.

The Gifts of Imperfection

Brené Brown · 2010

Brown’s research is on shame and worthiness, and this is her most tender, practical book about them. Bullying works by making you feel you are somehow not enough; Brown quietly dismantles that lie, showing that belonging and worth are not things you earn by being liked, but things you already hold. A steadying read for rebuilding the self-belief that bullying wears down.

Boundary Boss

Terri Cole · 2021

For the aftermath, when you need to rebuild the fences that were trampled. Cole is a psychotherapist, and her book is a clear, warm guide to noticing where your limits are and learning to voice them without guilt — especially useful for anyone who learned, under pressure, to make themselves small or silent to stay safe.

The Courage to Be Disliked

Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga · 2013

Written as a dialogue between a philosopher and a young man, this bestseller draws on Adlerian psychology to make a liberating case: that your worth does not depend on being approved of, and that other people’s judgments are, in the end, their business and not yours. Bracing company for anyone worn down by the need to be liked by people determined not to like them.

Odd Girl Out

Rachel Simmons · 2002

Simmons names the quieter, more social forms of bullying — exclusion, rumour, the sudden withdrawal of friendship — that so often go unseen because they leave no bruises. Clarifying and validating for anyone who was told they were ‘imagining it’, and essential reading for a parent trying to understand what a child cannot always put into words.

Eleanor & Park

Rainbow Rowell · 2013

A tender young-adult novel about two teenagers who don’t fit in, bullied in different ways, who become each other’s small, fierce refuge. For younger readers especially, it offers the rare comfort of seeing your own experience on the page — and the reminder that being an outsider is not the end of the story.

Wonder

R. J. Palacio · 2012

The story of Auggie, a boy with a facial difference starting school, and the cruelty and kindness he meets there. Written for younger readers but quietly profound at any age, it shifts the lens onto empathy without ever preaching. A good one to read alongside a child, or on your own when you need proof that kindness is still a choice people make.

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Poems about bullying

For when prose is not enough

Three poems that refuse to be diminished — borrowed spine, for the days your own is bent.

“An Obstacle”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1890

I was climbing up a mountain-path
With many things to do,
Important business of my own,
And other people’s too,
When I ran against a Prejudice
That quite cut off the view.

My work was such as could not wait,
My path quite clearly showed,
My strength and time were limited,
I carried quite a load;
And there that hulking Prejudice
Sat all across the road.

…I took my hat, I took my stick,
My load I settled fair,
I approached that awful incubus
With an absent-minded air,
And I walked directly through him,
As if he wasn’t there!

Gilman spends most of this poem doing what everyone advises you to do about a bully. She reasons with it, she appeals to its better nature, she tries being pleasant, she tries being firm. None of it shifts the thing an inch, because it was never actually listening. Then she stops negotiating and simply walks through it as though it were not there, and it turns out that it was not there, not in any solid sense, and never had been. She wrote it about the prejudice she met as a woman with work to do. It reads just as well about anyone sitting across your road making themselves look larger than they are. The refusal to keep explaining yourself is the whole victory.

Shop Charlotte Perkins Gilman prints →

“Still I Rise”

Maya Angelou, 1978

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Angelou’s most famous poem answers every attempt to shame or diminish with unshakeable dignity. It is not gentle — it rises — and that is exactly why it belongs here, for the days when you need borrowed strength to lift your head. (An extract only; the full poem rewards reading aloud.) Find it in And Still I Rise.

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“Incident”

Countee Cullen, 1925

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

Cullen was eight. The poem is about a racist insult and it belongs first to that history. But the last stanza is why it sits here too: eight months in a city, and one moment is all that survived. Anybody who was bullied as a child knows that arithmetic exactly. The years blur and the one sentence stays, word for word, decades later. Find it in Color.

Shop Countee Cullen prints →

Quotes & Prose

Quotes about bullying to keep

Lines for the moment someone else’s cruelty is still ringing in your ears.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Get this quote as a print →

You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.

Brené Brown

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When they go low, we go high.

Michelle Obama

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When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.

Malala Yousafzai

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Some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others.

Paramahansa Yogananda

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If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

Roald Dahl

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From Georgia

Pause here, if you need to

A moment of steadiness, for when someone else’s cruelty is still echoing.

Inner Child Healing For Peace & Safety

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A gentle return to the younger self who was hurt, to offer them the safety and kindness they should have had all along.

Listen Now For Free

When You Can’t Find Hope, Look for a ‘What If’

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

When hope feels impossible, sometimes all you need is a single small ‘what if’ to begin finding your way back.

Read the Essay →

Self-Worth & Confidence Boost Meditation

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A gentle meditation for remembering your own worth when the world has been unkind. You are not what they said.

Listen Now For Free

The Inner Peace Toolkit

Digital Self-Care Toolkit · Georgia Clare

2 guided meditations, an Inner Peace Journal, an affirmations eBook, 10 printable affirmation prints and 10 calming phone wallpapers — small daily practices to come back to whenever you need to slow down and reconnect with yourself.

Explore the Toolkit →

Questions people ask

Reading for Bullying

Where should I start with bullying?

If you only read one thing, start with The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown — it goes straight to the worth that bullying tries to take. And if a book feels like too much today, read Henley’s “Invictus” or Angelou’s “Still I Rise” below; both are short, and both were written to be leaned on.

What can my child read if they’re being bullied?

Wonder by R. J. Palacio and Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell both let a younger reader see their experience reflected with warmth and hope. Reading one together can also open a conversation that is hard to start head-on. Alongside any book, please make sure a child who is being bullied has told a trusted adult — a story helps, but it is not a substitute for support.

What are some good quotes about bullying?

Lines worth keeping include “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” (Martin Luther King Jr.) and “When they go low, we go high” (Michelle Obama). There are more in the quotes section above.

Why read when you’re being bullied?

Because the right words can hand your worth back to you when someone has been trying to take it. Reading won’t stop a bully, but it can keep you company, remind you that the fault was never yours, and give you language for what you’re feeling. And it can be a bridge to the people — a friend, a parent, a teacher, a helpline — who can actually help.

Bullying

Prescribed reading

For when prose is not enough

Quotes about bullying to keep

Pause here, if you need to

Reading for Bullying

Where should I start with bullying?

What can my child read if they’re being bullied?

What are some good quotes about bullying?

Why read when you’re being bullied?

More prescriptions await.