Teen Mental Health: Books of Hope

The state of the world right now is completely overwhelming me. I have spent days trying to figure out what to say here, how to put to words the amount of fear and grief floating around all of us. Mostly, I feel like a broken record, saying over and over: ‘take care of each other, community is all we have, don’t give up on the people around you’. I feel guilty writing about anything else, but I also know how much of an overload it can be, constantly hearing about the world’s many problems. How do we avoid burning out, while continuing to stay informed and active? I’m still figuring it out, but today I wanted to give a list of books that bring me hope. Hope for the future, whether that’s in entirely new sci-fi societies, visionary fiction, or just narratives (fiction and non-fiction) about people coming together to support their friends and neighbors.

1. A Psalm for The Wild-Built by Becky Chambers - this book, and its sequel A Prayer for the Crown Shy are two books I wish I could read for the first time again. A story about a tea monk and a robot living in an egalitarian society created from an old world that was on the brink of destruction.

Becky Chambers’ other books are also wonderful and can be classified as visionary science fiction. Highly recommend her book The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (which is a whole series!).

2. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer - A non-fiction book by a botanist and enrolled member of the Potawatomi Nation, Braiding Sweetgrass is filled with stories of plants and the people around them, and shows reciprocal relationships between humans and nature.

Her other books are also fabulous! A shorter read of hers that just came out is The Serviceberry, about abundance and reciprocity in nature, especially when thinking about a ‘gift economy’.

3. Not Too Late edited by Rebecca Solnit - I found this little collection of essays from various climate activists and scientists in a bookstore, and consequently spent a half hour sitting on the floor reading some of the essays. This collection is one that tries to shift the narrative that there is, in fact, quite a lot for us to do in regards to stopping the advancement of climate change.

Rebecca Solnit has another short essay-turned-book called Hope in the Dark which was written to explicitly try to counteract the despair so many activists and compassionate humans feel.

4. Octavia’s Brood edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha - this is a collection of visionary and speculative fiction stories exploring different possible versions of this world. Whether it’s a world without war and capitalism, one without prisons, or a place recovering from systems of oppression, these stories are beautiful, imaginative ways of re-thinking the world around us.

5. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin - more sort of utopian science fiction. This one takes place on two different planets, one with essentially a utopian lifestyle, and another one, more like the world we live in now. We learn about both societies, and about one scientist who travels from the utopian society to the other. This book felt revolutionary to me, in thinking about how our world is constructed, and what it’s constructed on.

Honestly, anything by Ursula K. Le Guin will permanently rock your world. The way she explores utopian and stateless societies, and what they really mean is unlike anything else you’ll ever read. I’m not a huge fan of sci-fi or novels that take place in other worlds, but I’ll read anything written by this woman. (Thanks to my 8th grade math teacher who forced me to read one of Le Guin’s books, and told me to keep going even when I was skeptical).

6. The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu - This is a graphic novel about both the importance of found community and artificial intelligence. Yes, it involves very advanced AI, but not in a terrifying way. Set around a young inventor and the humanoid robot built by the woman she works for, it thinks more about what happens when the lines blur between AI and human, especially with emotions.

Mooncakes is another personal favorite, written by her and Suzanne Walker. It’s a romance set in a bookshop run by two magical grandmas and their granddaughter.

7. The Solutions Are Already Here by Peter Gelderloos - We are seeing across the globe small, grassroot community networks building climate resistance movements. We see through these stories of food sovereignty activism, reforestation initiatives, resistance to the building of pipelines and airports what real local activism can do to resist climate change and create stronger relationships in the process.

These are just a few books, but they have brought me so much joy when reading them. With all of them I have become completely absorbed into my imagination, transported from the current moment, at least for a little while. Hopefully (no pun intended), these will bring you some comfort as well.

***Lydia Bach is a 16 year old writer and high school student. In her free time you can find her singing or lying in bed worrying over the state of the world.***