Emotional Freedom

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston · 1937

Janie Crawford is married off at sixteen to a man with sixty acres, then to a man who runs a town and will not let her speak in it, and only in her forties does she meet someone who wants her to be a person rather than an ornament. Hurston writes the moment Janie finally answers back so well that readers tend to remember exactly where they were sitting. It is the best novel there is on the difference between being looked after and being free, and it is also very funny.

Nonviolent Communication

Marshall B. Rosenberg · 1999

The most practical book here. Rosenberg’s method comes down to separating what happened from the story you told about what happened, and then saying what you actually feel and actually need. It sounds mechanical on the page and it is, at first — you will feel ridiculous doing it. But the reason it appears on this list is that most people who cannot express a feeling were never given the vocabulary, and this is a vocabulary. Freedom is quite often just having the words.

Sula

Toni Morrison · 1973

Two friends in an Ohio town take opposite routes: Nel does everything expected of her, Sula does exactly as she likes and the town never forgives her for it. Morrison refuses to make either one the answer, which is what makes the book so useful. Sula’s freedom costs her almost everything and Nel’s respectability costs her something quieter and possibly larger. Read it if you have been told that setting yourself free will make you selfish, and want to see the actual arithmetic.

Atlas of the Heart

Brené Brown · 2021

Eighty-seven emotions, each carefully distinguished from the ones it is usually confused with: disappointment from regret, envy from jealousy, humiliation from shame. It is essentially a reference book and it can be read in ten-minute pieces. Brown’s argument is that you cannot manage a feeling you cannot name, and anyone who grew up in a house where feelings were not discussed will recognise how much of the difficulty is simply not knowing which one this is.

The Language of Emotions

Karla McLaren · 2010

McLaren goes through the emotions one at a time — anger, fear, shame, envy, grief — and asks what each is actually for, on the assumption that none of them is a malfunction. Anger tells you a boundary has gone; shame is checking your behaviour against your own code. It is long and occasionally a bit mystical in tone, and the central reframe is worth it: you cannot be free of feelings you have decided are your enemies.

My Brilliant Friend

Elena Ferrante · 2011

Elena and Lila grow up in a poor Naples neighbourhood where a girl’s life is largely decided by fifteen, and the whole four-book sequence is about who gets out, at what price, and whether getting out is the same as being free. Ferrante is unsentimental about envy and rivalry between women who love each other, which is rarer than it should be. Start here and you will probably read all four.

Burnout

Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski · 2019

The Nagoskis’ key idea is that dealing with the thing that upset you and dealing with the feeling it produced are two separate jobs, and most of us only ever do the first. The stressor gets resolved; the stress stays in the body with nowhere to go. Their answer is unglamorous and physical — movement, crying, laughter, affection — and it is the most practical thing here on actually letting a feeling finish rather than filing it.

Eat, Pray, Love

Elizabeth Gilbert · 2006

It has been mocked enough that people forget what is actually in it. Gilbert leaves a marriage nobody thought she should leave, has a breakdown on a bathroom floor, and then spends a year working out what she wants when there is nobody in the room to please. The Italy section on learning to enjoy things without earning them first is the part worth the price. Read it as a record of one woman giving herself permission, which is harder than it looks.