Help me build a library!

So my new job is at a family crisis center for women (mostly, though a few have children) who have recently been victims of domestic violence. I noticed that lots of the women list reading as an activity that they enjoy and that helps them relax on their intake sheets, but the in-house library available to them is seriously lacking. I just did an inventory of all the books here (took about five minutes, lol). The only things that weren't generic self-help, Xian, kid stuff or young adult stuff was a giant tome called The Literature of England, Pearl S. Buck's Mandala and a bio of a Maori teacher. This obviously won't do.

So, I am excited to fix this problem. What books should I pack this place with?

Things that are instructional, informative and empowering, and also things are entertaining and distracting.

I already got two donations!

Willa Cather - My Antonia
Toni Morrison - Beloved

my antonia will be a good one, wideopen windswept landscapes and people working their asses off and time passing

Pretty much any Willa Cather would be good.
What about quality short story collections? Katherine Anne Porter, Edith Wharton, Alice Munro (to pick female writers only) for example.

Having never been a woman in crisis, I am not a very knowlegable resource, but I would imagine that women in crisis would have a hard time concentrating on 'high' literature, unless it was well-plotted and had strong, interesting characters. Popular fiction of the past 40 years or so seems like a good field to hunt in, as opposed to 'literary' fiction.

I also suspect, with no evidence other than a vague hunch, there might be some excellent choices in popular YA fiction that could speak to women who had recently experienced domestic violence. Laurel would be the one to know what titles/authors to search out there.

Don't forget magazines!

kate atkinson is great: interesting characters, unusual plots, easy reading.

Man, we got so many donations that I'm having trouble fitting everything in. They encourage the girls to take/keep books, though it doesn't happen much, so hopefully everything will continue to fit. I'm also gonna purge things every once in a while that don't seem to interest people in favor of things that more likely will.

Willa Cather - My Antonia
Toni Morrison - Beloved

^both of these are being read right now!

i forgot about this thread, it sounds like a great thing to do, and like it's going well. there are various feminist anthologies that it'd be good to fit in, if you can get hold of them/if you've got space. feminism is for everybody by bell hooks, manifesta by amy richards and jennifer baumgardner.

OMG you need The Pinballs by Betsy Byars! Tho that is YA.

I like Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier. Ballsy, hilarious, empowering shit about how the woman's body works. Not like an "Our Bodies, Ourselves," type book, just facts and facts of crazy psychological and physiological exciting things. It got me to exercise! NOTHING can get me to fucking exercise. It's sex-positive but brash about all the right things. Really ace. Wld mail you my extra copy if you want.

I think some totally crazy fucking gory unhinged vengeance fantasy book wld make me feel pretty happy, but maybe not?

Alice Miller is really good, in the psych front. My mom-in-law who is a therapist likes Women Who Run with the Wolves, and gives it to her clients, but that book gave me the vom hardcore. (But this world is full of all types of people.)

Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng is a good struggle-type book by a smart, tenacious woman who was in a Communist thought reform prison camp. Not v religious at all (a bonus for me) but inspirational in the same way Elie Weisel is considered to be.

Will let you know if I think of more. I wish I could think of some good comics. I always keep Archie digests around, just pure comfort/junk reading. They always soothe me if I'm wicked flipped out. A lot of people have nostalgia and just enjoy sitting around remembering the silly, simple world of Riverdale.

Man, thanks for all the good recmomendtions Abbott and schlump.

Katha Pollitt (who I think writes for The Nation?) just mailed me a masive box of her own books, haw!

One of the girls is definitely reading the Sound and the Fury, cause someone wrote a quote from it on the community board.

I love the minor things that prompt people to read books. Like my mom read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn bcz a dog in a Looney Tunes cartoon peed no it when it could not find a tree. Or you hear a quote or a minor detail or someone you adore says they like it....

So all the women in the house right now are readers, which is awesome.

A girl wrote a quote from The Sound and the Fury on the dry-erase board in the hall.

I went upstairs today and saw a woman reading this:

http://www.comicsreporter.com/images/uploads/laperdidaabel_thumb.jpg

That is so cool about Katha Pollitt.

Another female short-story writer I have to recommend: Ellen Gilchrist.

Bliss Broyard's My Father, Dancing is good, too.

Thanks!