10 Best nonfiction books like Obit by Victoria Chang

Cover of Obit by Victoria Chang

Obit

By: Victoria Chang

4.27

Format: 113 pages, Paperback

After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grie…

"That darkness is not the absorption of color but the absorption of language."

-Victoria Chang, Obit

"That darkness is not the absorption of color but the absorption of language."

-Victoria Chang, Obit

"The way grief is really about future absence. The way the future closes its offices when a mother dies. What's left: a hole in the ground the size of violence."

-Victoria Chang, Obit

"The way grief is really about future absence. The way the future closes its offices when a mother dies. What's left: a hole in the ground the size of violence."

-Victoria Chang, Obit

If you liked the nonfiction plot in Obit by Victoria Chang , here is a list of 10 books like this:

Cover of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Jericho Brown, None, Chen Chen

1. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

By: Jericho Brown , None , Chen Chen

4.26

Format: 96 pages, Paperback

In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family—the s… read more

Similar categories in Jericho Brown's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • nonfiction
  • contemporary
  • asian literature
  • adult
"What is it, to remember nothing, of what one loved?"

-Jericho Brown, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

"But sometimes no one said anything & I saw him, the local paper boy on his route. His beanstalk frame & fragile bicycle. & I knew: we would be so terribly happy."

-Jericho Brown, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

"My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend. But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday. My mother was in the hospital & no o…"

-Jericho Brown, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

Cover of Look by Solmaz Sharif

2. Look

By: Solmaz Sharif

4.16

Format: 84 pages,

*Finalist for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award* *Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award* Solmaz Shar… read more

Similar categories in Solmaz Sharif's Look book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • nonfiction
  • read for school
Cover of What the Living Do: Poems by Marie Howe

3. What the Living Do: Poems

By: Marie Howe

3.00

Format: 48 pages, Paperback

Informed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex a… read more

Similar categories in Marie Howe's What the Living Do: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • adult
  • death

4. Bestiary: Poems

By: Donika Kelly

3.73

Format: 251 pages, Paperback

Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological m… read more

Similar categories in Donika Kelly's Bestiary: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

5. Bright Dead Things

By: Ada Limon

3.57

Format: None pages,

Bright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you k… read more

Similar categories in Ada Limon's Bright Dead Things book and Victoria Chang's Obit

Cover of frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss

6. frank: sonnets

By: Diane Seuss

4.50

Format: 137 pages, Paperback

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY WINNER OF THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD … read more

Similar categories in Diane Seuss's frank: sonnets book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • memoir
  • nonfiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
"I saw a little movie of a person stroking a small bird with two Q-tips, one held between the forefinger and thumb of each hand. It tipped back its head to receive the minor tenderness, which to the b…"

-Diane Seuss, frank: sonnets

Cover of Pilgrim Bell: Poems by Kaveh Akbar

7. Pilgrim Bell: Poems

By: Kaveh Akbar

4.24

Format: 80 pages, Paperback

Kaveh Akbar’s exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf. With formal virtuos… read more

Similar categories in Kaveh Akbar's Pilgrim Bell: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • adult
  • nonfiction
"Wrath is the desire to repay what you've suffered."

-Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrim Bell: Poems

"Whatever I learn makes me angry to have learned it."

-Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrim Bell: Poems

Cover of Obit by Victoria Chang

8. Obit

By: Victoria Chang

4.27

Format: 113 pages, Paperback

After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grie… read more

Similar categories in Victoria Chang's Obit book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • american
  • biography
  • memoir
  • death
  • read for school
  • nonfiction
  • contemporary
  • asian literature
  • adult
"That darkness is not the absorption of color but the absorption of language."

-Victoria Chang, Obit

"The way grief is really about future absence. The way the future closes its offices when a mother dies. What's left: a hole in the ground the size of violence."

-Victoria Chang, Obit

"If you cut out a rectangle of a perfectly blue sky, no clouds, no wind, no birds, frame it with a blue frame, place it faceup on the floor of an empty museum with an open atrium to the sky, that is g…"

-Victoria Chang, Obit

"The artist is only visiting pain, imagining it. We praise the artist, not the apple, not the apple's shadow, which is murdered slowly. There must be some way of drawing a picture so that it doesn't b…"

-Victoria Chang, Obit

Cover of The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi

9. The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

By: Franny Choi

3.99

Format: 144 pages, Hardcover

From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds--past, present, an… read more

Similar categories in Franny Choi's The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • asian literature
  • poetry
  • adult
  • contemporary
"I have last year's ashes in my throat, stories stuffed so full of morals they bleed sugar."

-Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

"How can I explain the things and things and things I did wrong? I was never any good at telling the difference between what wanted me and what wanted me gone"

-Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Cover of The Hurting Kind: Poems by Ada Limon

10. The Hurting Kind: Poems

By: Ada Limon

4.34

Format: 120 pages, Hardcover

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ou… read more

Similar categories in Ada Limon's The Hurting Kind: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • american
  • nonfiction
  • adult
"There is a solitude in this world I cannot pierce. I would die for it."

-Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems

"Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested…"

-Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems

Cover of I Do Everything I'm Told by Megan Fernandes

11. I Do Everything I'm Told

By: Megan Fernandes

4.17

Format: 104 pages, Paperback

Restless, contradictory, and witty, Megan Fernandes’ I Do Everything I’m Told explores disobedience… read more

Similar categories in Megan Fernandes's I Do Everything I'm Told book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • contemporary
Cover of The Carrying by Ada Limon

12. The Carrying

By: Ada Limon

4.40

Format: 120 pages, Hardcover

From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carryi… read more

Similar categories in Ada Limon's The Carrying book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • adult
  • nonfiction
  • contemporary
"What if, instead of carrying a child, I am supposed to carry grief?"

-Ada Limon, The Carrying

"All I’ve been working on is napping, and maybe being kinder to others, to myself."

-Ada Limon, The Carrying

"I know you don’t always understand, but let me point to the first wet drops landing on the stones, the noise like fingers drumming the skin. I can’t help it. I will never get over making everything s…"

-Ada Limon, The Carrying

"I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marve…"

-Ada Limon, The Carrying

Cover of Customs: Poems by Solmaz Sharif

13. Customs: Poems

By: Solmaz Sharif

4.21

Format: 86 pages, Paperback

In Customs , Solmaz Sharif examines what it means to exist in the nowhere of the arrivals terminal,… read more

Similar categories in Solmaz Sharif's Customs: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • adult
  • nonfiction
  • contemporary
Cover of Judas Goat: Poems by Gabrielle Bates

14. Judas Goat: Poems

By: Gabrielle Bates

4.21

Format: 104 pages, Paperback

Gabrielle Bates’s electric debut collection Judas Goat plumbs the depths of intimate relationships.… read more

Similar categories in Gabrielle Bates's Judas Goat: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
Cover of Soft Science by Franny Choi

15. Soft Science

By: Franny Choi

3.93

Format: 100 pages, Paperback

Soft Science explores queer, Asian American femininity. A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grou… read more

Similar categories in Franny Choi's Soft Science book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • asian literature
  • poetry
  • adult
  • contemporary
"having been hurt before"

-Franny Choi, Soft Science

"fiended; fell for another"

-Franny Choi, Soft Science

"it's too late to stop smiling."

-Franny Choi, Soft Science

"shouldn't a god have blood to lose"

-Franny Choi, Soft Science

Cover of You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World by Ada Limon

16. You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

By: Ada Limon

4.11

Format: 176 pages, Hardcover

Published association  with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate o… read more

Similar categories in Ada Limon's You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • adult
  • nonfiction
Cover of Brute: Poems by Emily Skaja

17. Brute: Poems

By: Emily Skaja

4.03

Format: 72 pages, Paperback

Selected by Joy Harjo as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets Emi… read more

Similar categories in Emily Skaja's Brute: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • american
  • adult
  • contemporary
"unfull but full of loathing"

-Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

"I know what to do with the dark."

-Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

"Hello you are a vessel of vessels."

-Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

"Blue river nameless, sky blank, pointless"

-Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

Cover of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen

18. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

By: Chen Chen

4.15

Format: 128 pages, Paperback

What happens when everything falls away, when those you call on in times of need are themselves cal… read more

Similar categories in Chen Chen's Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • asian literature
  • poetry
  • adult
"If we could communicate fully, there would be no need to communicate. If we could love perfectly, there would be no need to love. If we could finish grieving, there would be no need to live. If we co…"

-Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

"You climb back in bed & touch my face. You climb back in bed to touch my face. You wrap your arms around me & it’s like you’re the patron saint if touch as well as soft sunlight & soothed dogs. Or yo…"

-Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

Cover of Deluge by Leila Chatti

19. Deluge

By: Leila Chatti

4.55

Format: 74 pages, Paperback

In her early twenties, Leila Chatti started bleeding and did not stop. Physicians referred to this … read more

Similar categories in Leila Chatti's Deluge book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • american
Cover of Guillotine: Poems by Eduardo C. Corral

20. Guillotine: Poems

By: Eduardo C. Corral

4.34

Format: 72 pages, Paperback

The astonishing second collection by the author of Slow Lightning, winner of the Yale Younger Poets… read more

Similar categories in Eduardo C. Corral's Guillotine: Poems book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry
  • adult
  • nonfiction
Cover of Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali

21. Theophanies

By: Sarah Ghazal Ali

4.46

Format: 100 pages, Paperback

Theophanies, selected as the Editors Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award, is a testament to women… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Ghazal Ali's Theophanies book and Victoria Chang's Obit

  • poetry

9 Best contemporary books like Obit by Victoria Chang

Transform Your Habits

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

Jericho Brown , None , Chen Chen

4.26

Transform Your Habits

frank: sonnets

Diane Seuss

4.50

Transform Your Habits

Obit

Victoria Chang

4.27

Transform Your Habits

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Franny Choi

3.99

View all the books

17 Top poetry books like Deluge by Leila Chatti

Transform Your Habits

The Wild Iris

Louise Glück

4.18

Transform Your Habits

What the Living Do: Poems

Marie Howe

3.00

Transform Your Habits

Crush

Richard Siken

3.67

Transform Your Habits

frank: sonnets

Diane Seuss

4.50

View all the books

Never miss a story from us, get weekly updates in your inbox.