Grief

"The art of losing isn't hard to master," wrote poet Elizabeth Bishop. Perhaps she meant that we will all face loss at some point in our lives. In this collection, we have brought together texts that take up the universal experience of grief.

The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

Publication year 2005

Genre Autobiography / Memoir, Nonfiction

Themes Love, Memory, Marriage, Mental Health, Grief

Tags Grief & Death, Psychology, Psychology, Classic Fiction, Biography

Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, explores her experiences mourning the death of her husband and the severe illness of her daughter in 2003. Didion, an American journalist and essayist, first gained popularity during the 1960s and 70s covering counterculture and Hollywood, but in The Year of Magical Thinking she turns to more intimate material. Didion’s husband John Gregory Dunne died of a heart attack while he and Didion were caring for their... Read The Year of Magical Thinking Summary

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

by Michael Chabon

Publication year 2007

Genre Novel, Fiction

Themes Conflict, Grief, Guilt, Community, Immigration, Nation, Fate, Religion & Spirituality

Tags Science Fiction, Mystery & Crime Fiction, Fantasy

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007) is a literary detective novel by American author Michael Chabon. It is set in an alternate history where the United States government created the District of Sitka in Alaska as a temporary refugee settlement for European Jews after the State of Israel was destroyed in 1948. In the novel’s present timeline, Detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of his neighbor, Emanuel Lasker, against the backdrop of Sitka’s imminent Reversion to... Read The Yiddish Policemen's Union Summary

They Went Left

by Monica Hesse

Publication year 2020

Genre Novel, Fiction

Themes Family, Emotions/Behavior: Courage, Perseverance, Fear, Grief, Guilt, Hate & Anger, Love, Memory, Death, Marriage, Siblings, War, Good & Evil, Justice, Truth & Lies

Tags Historical Fiction, World War II, Military & War, World History

... Read They Went Left Summary

Things in Nature Merely Grow

by Yiyun Li

Publication year 2025

Genre Autobiography / Memoir, Nonfiction

Themes Grief, Mothers, Literature

Tags Contemporary Literature, Literary Fiction

Yiyun Li’s 2025 memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, is a work of creative nonfiction that explores the author’s grief after the suicides of her two sons: 16-year-old Vincent in 2017 and 19-year-old James in 2024. In the aftermath of this second, unforeseen tragedy, Li attempts to construct a framework for living within what she terms the “abyss” of her new reality, a permanent state that defies conventional narratives of healing. The memoir continues a... Read Things in Nature Merely Grow Summary

Towers Falling

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Publication year 2016

Genre Novel, Fiction

Themes Grief, Race, Community, Family

Tags Historical Fiction, Race & Racism, Relationships, Grief & Death, Diversity, American Literature, 9/11, Children`s Literature, Education, Education, Realistic Fiction, World History

... Read Towers Falling Summary

Train Dreams

by Denis Johnson

Publication year 2002

Genre Novella, Fiction

Themes Loneliness, Grief, Memory, Regret, The Past, Environment

Tags Historical Fiction, American Literature, World History, Western

Set mainly in the early 1900s, Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, Train Dreams, presents snapshots in the life of Robert Grainier, a laborer in the Northwest frontier. Working in the logging and railroad industries while living a remote life in the wilderness, Grainier navigates a harsh world while contending with grief. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2012, Train Dreams tackles themes including Industrial Progress and the Erosion of Wilderness, The Symbiosis of... Read Train Dreams Summary

Traveling through the Dark

by William Stafford

Publication year 1962

Genre Poem, Fiction

Themes Grief, Guilt, Hope, Regret, Death, Animals, Environment, Place

Published in 1962 in an America just beginning to grapple with the responsibilities of environmental stewardship and the catastrophic cost of technology’s impact on nature, William Stafford’s deceptively simple poem “Traveling Through the Dark” raises difficult—often unanswerable—questions about humanity’s responsibility for the future of nature. Driving a mountain road one night, the speaker comes upon a dead doe, hit by a car and left by the side of the road. While clearing the deer off... Read Traveling through the Dark Summary