The field of men’s mental health is a vast, wild sea of resources. The language that supports men’s health often sounds dangerously close to the language that is steering men back into harmful patterns. Often, even books personally recommended by kind men are full of implicitly problematic themes and language. Beyond that, as our language of healing grows, it is always appropriated and used to put new coats of paint over the exact patterns that we’re working to heal. Because of this, trying to determine which resources are actually valuable can be a real nightmare. If you’re here, it’s probably because you want to understand the resources that I have found valuable. So here’s a list of resources that I recommend. This list is by no means comprehensive, nor is it intended to be. There are many wonderful books on masculinity that I have never read, and many I have never heard of. This is merely a list of the resources that I know of which I vouch for- I hope you find them as valuable as I have. As best as I can tell, these will steer us in a healthy direction. bell hooks is at the top of the list because she offers the most comprehensive and resonant overview of the current state of masculinity that I’ve ever read. If you want one book, I would start with that one.
- On Masculinity:
- “Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” by bell hooks
- “Trickster, Magician, and Grieving Man: Reconnecting Men with the Earth” by Glen Mazis
- “Beyond the Hero: Classic Stories of Men in Search of Soul” by Allen Chinen
- On Self-Love:
- “Loving What Is” by Byron Katie
- “The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are” by Alan Watts
- “The Mindful Way Through Depression” by Williams, Teasdale, Segal, and Kabat-Zinn
- On Communication & Conflict:
- “The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence within Activist Communities” edited by: Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, & Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
- “Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm” by Kazu Haga
- “Difficult Conversations” by Stone, Patton, and Heen
- “Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair” by Sarah Schulman
- On Worldview:
- “The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive” by Martin Prechtel
- “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- “Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change” by Sherri Mitchell
- “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds” by adrienne marie brown
- “Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation” by Silvia Federici
- Fiction that supports Healthy Masculinity:
- “The Fifth Sacred Thing/City of Refuge” by Starhawk
- “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. LeGuin
- Other Media:
- The online essay: “Unthinkable Thoughts: call-out culture in the age of covid 19″ by adrienne marie brown
- The film: “The Mask You Live In”