Fresh Air - Breaking The Menstruation Taboo

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

More than half of the population menstruates, and yet there is still so much shame and stigma surrounding what is a normal part of life. We talk with filmmaker Lina Lyte Plioplyte about her new documentary Periodical. The film looks at the origins of the cultural stigma around periods. We also talk about period poverty, taxation on menstrual products, and reframing how we think about menopause. The documentary is streaming on Peacock and airing on MSNBC. 
Also, Maureen Corrigan shares her picks for the 10 best books of the year.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. How did menstrual periods, a natural monthly occurrence for more than half of the population, become so taboo? Periods! Hmm, periods. My palms are sweaty. I feel awkward about it because it's really weird. Like, there's a reason if you cut yourself then it starts bleeding, but I don't really think there's a reason if you just start bleeding from your private.

I'm kind of nervous speaking about periods, to be honest. Well, I call my period my evil best friend because she always come on time. She give me a hard time, and sometimes I'm happy to see her, if you know what I mean. So she's my evil best friend. That's a clip from the new documentary, Periodical, which chronicles the social and political movement now underway to change everything from unfair taxation of menstrual products to erasing the stigma and shame that has plagued women throughout history. talked with educators, scientists, doctors, lawmakers, and young activists who are traveling the country to advocate for equal access to menstrual hygiene products and the right to reproductive health education. Periodical is now on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock. Lina Lite-Polplite, welcome to Fresh Air. I am so excited to be here and to talk all about periods. Well, yes.

Periods are one of those occurrences that, I mean, it basically sort of blends into everyday life. What made you decide you wanted to do a documentary about it? One day I was writing my diary, writing about this beautiful event that happens to half of the world's population and how we do a lot of things while we bleed. You know, we run marathons, we work and, you know, don't say a peep, even if we're in terrible pain. It's a beautiful cycle. It feels like, wow, some kind of mystery cycle. And then we're not supposed to talk about it. And not only that, I feel like it's more than not supposed to talk about it. You're really not supposed to talk about it. And not only that, I feel like it's more than not supposed to talk about it. You're really not supposed to talk about it. And so I, I was curious about this. Like, it's not just like, we just don't kind of, you know, do you want to go to the bathroom? Yeah,

you know, it's not a taboo to go pee, but something about the tampon that becomes a taboo, becomes like, oh, she did not. I wanted to poke at this taboo. Yes. Well, I mean, in the documentary, I think one of the folks that you talked with said that throughout history, on one hand, our fertility is seen as our greatest asset and power. At the same time, we devalue menstruation. And it is a topic that we are conditioned not to talk about. So much so, I'm just wondering, were you ever concerned that this would be a topic people wanted to watch a whole documentary about? You know, it took me six years to make a documentary. And from those six years, four years were spent finding the right partners who would say, hell, yes, let's talk about this.

We must make this documentary because I knew pretty strongly that we have to take a look at this issue. Half of the world's population is directly experiencing it. The other half is indirectly, very clearly experiencing it as well, because there would be no child born if a woman wouldn't have her period. Let's face it, it's a sign of fertility. It's a sign of womanhood. And so for me, it was more so knock knock production company, you know, would would you like to make this with me? No? Okay, fine. I'm moving on, finding different producers. Did you get rejected a lot? Not quite rejected, more sometimes ghosted. But it was about finding the same kind of a rock and roll,

let's make it fun, taboo is here to be smashed, let's look directly into the bloody abyss. I needed to find the same people who thought similarly to me and once I found XTR which is production company who made it we were like boom let's go let's do it let's lean in to it you know and once we found MSNBC it was like green light off we go we literally made it in 13 moons 13 months So it was fast. Once we got the right people on the board, it was really fast. Well, this documentary, you use a lot of humor, by the way. It is deep. You talk about perceptions of periods throughout history, religious beliefs about it, research

or the lack thereof about women's bodies and our social condition. One big issue you take on is period poverty, which we've actually heard about more and more over the last few years. What is period poverty? Period poverty is, well, it's inability to buy period products because they're too expensive. That's kind of a blanket statement. And it's also, well, why do we need period products, right? To have perhaps dignified, perhaps an easy way to go to work, to go to school, something to absorb your monthly bleeding. So you don't have to, you know, have a bunch of toilet paper rolled up between your legs, literally. This impacts millions of women or people who menstruate.

A lot of people. I mean, in the US, how many people live under poverty line? How much does a pack of hopefully organic tampons cost? And you know, if you're a single mom raising four teenage daughters, counting how much does it cost per month to just have a dignified period for five bleeding people in the house? No, that's where we start looking at, okay, so if pack of tampons is $6.99, and I need three of them, if I have a heavy flow in the cycle. Plus there is this tampon tax on it. Oh, interesting. Right.

So that's what we look at the film. Yeah, you actually follow a group of young people trying to get bills passed to abolish the tax on menstrual products like pads and tampons. I want to play a clip of two activists from the documentary talking about their work to abolish the tampon tax, which is a sales tax anywhere from four to seven percent on menstrual products. Let's take a listen. So what would be like our dream vision for 2022 of the states that flip or that we think could budge a little? Texas, because we've been working on them so long and because we've won over the controller. Anything women's rights or social justice related in Texas, I think, says a lot

and could also be good momentum for anywhere in the South. Everything's bigger in Texas. Well, Texas collects the most money annually, I think about $25 million from the tampon tax. You just heard a clip from the documentary periodical about the menstrual period equity movement. And that was two activists, one of them Madeline Morales, who's part of this cohort of young activists on the front lines of this movement. Now they were able to help flip that the Texas tampon tax was actually eliminated this past September, and you followed them as they repealed the tax in Michigan. Can you explain a little bit, though, the argument on why the tampon tax. What the hell is that? That's just extra tax that is right now in 22 states in the United States. It's a sales tax. So whether you're part of the state or not,

you get taxed on it and it is applied to deemed non-essential items. I'll give you an example. Toilet paper. Everybody must, you know, have toilet paper for dignified bathroom experience. Absolutely essential, thus not taxed. Somehow, menstrual products were deemed by the lawmakers non-essential, nice to haves, kind of like deodorant. You know, if you have it, wonderful. If you don't, well, it's not the end of the world. So in a lot of these states, that's what happened. This sales tax got applied to menstrual products. And well, as majority of those who bleed would tell you, it's quite essential. It's not a nice to have, which is really interesting to be like, wait, why was this tax, why did

this tax happen in the first place for menstrual products? Well, it turns out Laura Strasfeld, who is a wonderful activist and lawyer with Period Law, the one who you just heard in the clip, she started going around and talking with the lawmakers, majority of them Republicans, probably 99% of them men, and she started collecting information. What's going on here? She found out that most men did not know how menstruation works. And thus it was kind of maybe thought, you know, menstruation is kind of like when you want to go to pee. It's You kind of hold it in there, then you go to the bathroom, and you release it all. Wow.

I mean, this is sort of astounding, but also not surprising, because you also found that sex education and reproductive health education is something that is not taught. And we do know that. And there's actually a battle in many southern states to not teach it. One of the activists asked an interesting question, especially in advance of talking to legislators, because she wondered if lawmakers would conflate or connect conversations about menstrual equity with abortion rights, which is very valid. It's a valid question because we see in places like Florida with the don't say period law. One lawmaker in the film actually said that he was dissuaded by other lawmakers to take this on because it is seen as a liberal cause.

I am wondering what you saw when you were following activists and watching them talk with these lawmakers. Once they understood how periods work, were they actually receptive to repealing attacks or thinking about other ways to support women who menstruate? Right, isn't it fascinating? We got to see kind of a spectrum of takes on both period tax and how it relates to abortions. Of course, abortions is such a hot issue and such a difficult issue, complex issue to converse about. But what we've started seeing, especially in Michigan, that turned to be kind of a purple state, and it was a Democrat-led initiative to remove tampon tax that then became a Republican led mission to take down the tampon tax.

So we started seeing, oh, look, it's becoming bipartisan issue. Suddenly it becomes, once you know enough information, it becomes, oh, okay, this is actually nonsensical. It's true that this tax is unconstitutional. Why is it unconstitutional? Because these products are necessary for half of the population, and you tax that half of the population where it should not be fair by constitution

to tax only a specific gender. Access to birth control, though, is very much connected to this because it's about body autonomy. Such a big conversation. And this is where conversation about periods turns revolutionary, because in majority of educational systems in the United States, you probably first of all, boys are kicked out of the class once we talk about menstruation, which is so sad to me. And, you know, the health class segregation. I wish simply boys would learn about what's happening with the girls and girls would learn what happens with the boys. We would have so much more empathy, so much more compassion, simply by understanding what's happening in the other body, which I don't inhabit, right? To understand, oh, there's a different story going on there.

I love the moment in the classroom in Periodical, in which we show Chelsea Von Chas, period educator, going to different schools in underserved, mostly African-American schools in Los Angeles, and simply giving a workshop about menstruation and menstrual cycle in which she talks about how do you feel? Are you observing your cycle throughout the cycle? Not just when you menstruate, but before and when you ovulate. And she drops the ovulation bomb. Now why ovulation is somehow a strangely revolutionary thing to talk about. Well, if you teach young menstruators about ovulation, you give them a weapon of agency, knowing your body and knowing when you actually can get pregnant. If we teach young girls to do that before they need to go to the abortion clinic, they are aware of their own bodies. This is a massive hack to empowerment because then I know

when exactly I am fertile and I can do something about it once I know, right? If I'm just taught that my vagina and my uterus are these dangerous places, which can always be fertile, and thus, you know, like no sex before marriage, or whatever, you know, and add a church to it and make it sinful and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's the one story. Another story is look, your body is turning on this beautiful cycle that will happen to you for next 35, 40 years. And every week you're different. Let's learn to surf the cycle of this beautiful menstrual cycle. There are several myths that you take on in this documentary. first is that the time of the month makes us crazy and hysterical. And I want to play a clip from the documentary. It's about the word hysterical, which the root

word for hysterical is hysteria. Let's listen. The word hysteria comes from the word hysteria, which is Greek for uterus, because people started to say that women were crazy because their uteruses were wandering all over their bodies. Hysteria was not taken out of official manuals until 1980, and it was just this catch-all term that doctors used to let themselves off the hook for diagnoses they were having trouble making. The first ever encyclopedia written by Pliny the Elder in 77 AD had an entire chapter devoted to menstruation. He said that menstruation could

drive a dog mad, that it could kill crops. If a man had period sex with a woman, he might die. That was a clip from the new MSNBC and Peacock documentary periodical. Lena, as you point out, we are socially conditioned to believe that women suffer from extreme emotion to the point that we can't be trusted to make decisions, in part for so long because medical research actually did not study the impact of hormones on the body. And we see that as a negative. We often say, oh, it's my time of the month, or I'm a little crazy or emotional because it's that time of the month. But what surprises did you learn about the benefit of those monthly hormonal swings? To me, this is where the real juicy part of periodical starts, is looking into taboo,

understanding that at least 2,000 years have gone by with that Pliny the Elder's, you know, when a woman menstruates, the plants die, and dogs howl. You know, we're kind of a deadly, but also incapable creatures. And I feel like this movie, we made with,

now we just have just enough science and data. Thank you for a lot of data collection through the apps and whatnot to understand a little bit better what's going on in the body that menstruates. What I find fascinating is we are starting to learn about hormones. We're starting to learn about, you know, collecting of millions and millions of points of data that we are cyclical beings. These bodies that bleed that we used to just think, we don't know them. They're hysterical. They're crazy. Woman is a mystery. Just leave them alone and don't, you know, don't put them in the scientific research because they screw up the research because there's too many data points going on to we don't know and we don't understand and thus or here's the contraceptive pill or you're just crazy you know eat some tylenol and go to bed or whatever now

we have a little bit more research we have a little bit more understanding so all of a sudden we're like oh wow one in ten women have endometriosis. What is endometriosis? We've been looking at endo for 20 years. We still don't know the exact reason it happens, for example, right? But we're starting to understand a bit more and more about the cycle. And so I propose learning to surf this red wave, which means we're different each week, right? We have estrogen and progesterone dancing in our bodies and it does affect us, our moods, how we eat, how we perform, how we even think each week of a month. Now, if you just listen of very subtle cues of your body, you can learn to live with it instead of against it or just ignoring it. Well, the thing about listening to your body, the way that the medical profession industry and pharma seems to use birth control as a solution for any issues a woman might have, as if the way to deal with it is to erase it so you don't have a period.

Is that a newer phenomenon? It's very interesting, right? Because the pill really liberated us. You know, it gave us a lot of power to be sexually free. And I salute the pill for that reason. It's absolutely wonderful. However, I believe that nowadays we know more about our bodies. So we don't need to just put menstruators on the pill and be like, okay, there's something wrong with you. We're going to put you on the pill. It's going to remove your acne. It's going to remove your strange menstrual pains. Here you go. Right. I feel like we know more. We can do better than that.

There's so many more factors now that we can look into instead of just turning off the period, because we think period is kind of nuisance and it makes your life easier not to have it or you don't even know that you don't have it on contraceptives contraceptive makes your body think that you're pregnant constantly so you don't have an ovulation cycle oh maybe I don't need one well what I'm arguing is it's kind of fun. That is a new way of thinking about it. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Lena Litte-Ploplite.

We're talking about her new documentary, Periodical, which chronicles the social and political movements underway to end the taxation of menstrual products and erase the stigma and shame around a woman's menstrual cycle. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Hi, I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. Before we get back to our show, we want to take a minute to say thank you so much to our Fresh Air Plus supporters and anyone listening who donates to public media. Everything you hear from the NPR network really does depend on your contributions. For anyone listening who isn't a supporter yet, right now is a great time to get involved. If you like perks, Fresh Air Plus offers sponsor-free listening and exclusive bonus episodes. If you want to make a tax-deductible donation to your favorite NPR station or stations, that's great too. We've even had NPR Plus subscribers make additional contributions. No matter how you give,

your donation helps us continue to bring you news and shows across the NPR network. If you value what we do here, please give today at donate.npr.org slash fresh air or explore NPR Plus at plus.npr.org. Thanks. Today, we're talking to Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Lena Litte-Ploplite about her new documentary periodical, which chronicles the social and political movement underway to lift the shame of a woman's menstrual cycle. Her feature-length directorial debut, Advanced Style, about stylish women in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, is currently streaming on Amazon. Periodical is now on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock.

A lot of us know about toxic shock syndrome, which can happen basically when you keep a tampon in too long. But in the early days of tampons in the 1970s, a significant number of women died using them. Why was that happening? Yeah, I don't know if many people know this, but in 1970s, Procter and Gamble created a super tampon and they thought, wow, would not be convenient. Imagine putting a tampon in once for all of your cycle. So if you bleed your entire cycle, you would just have one tampon inside of you. Sounds amazing. Sounds so easy, especially when we're conditioned that this period is the most nuisance thing ever so why not to stick something in there that absorbs all of your blood for all of those days turns out it's a

horrible idea turns out that it's like a bacteria breeding and toxic shock causing idea and so at first they didn't know what was happening, but women started dying. And at first, Procter & Gamble did not take responsibility, said, oh, the users are not using it right. Scientific community figured out that it's a toxic shock syndrome. It's a new disease that happens if you hold tampon or this super tampon inside of your body for too long. And it's extremely deadly and it's very fast. So it was a huge red flag in the community, you know, for everyone who bleeds. And also understanding that in order of serving convenience, serving this idea that period is nuisance and dirty and this thing that we wish wouldn't happen,

women started dying. This is important to talk about today because while that is not happening, you explore the chemicals used to make pads and tampons more absorbent and fresh smelling. There are chemicals used today in the products that we use, and there is really no regulation on what chemicals can be used? periods are something to be hidden. And thus, can we make it smell like a rose bouquet? Or as comedians in the film say, it smells like a cheap candle. Does it actually cover the smell of menstruation? As you note in the documentary, the U.S. has never really offered comprehensive sex education. How does that compare to other countries? Is this a universal issue? That's a very good question. And I wouldn't dare to make a worldwide statement about it. The whole point in the film was to focus

solely on the United States. Why? Because it felt easy to be like, look, in India, women are not allowed to cook for their husbands when they're menstruating. Look, in Kenya, girls are missing school because they don't have supplies or running water to have menstrual products. And then we turned around and we saw that in New York City and Los Angeles, the same issues are true. And apparently one in five girls has missed school because of her menstruation in the United States, in the United States. So I like not to exotifying the issue of period poverty, of in general issues with bleeding bodies and access to products around the world, but looking directly into the United States and to the metropolis too, into literally Los Angeles and New York, where we think, you know, we've got everything figured out and be

like, oh yeah, stigma is alive and well. And also stigma, once you shine a light on it, has a very short lifespan. Because if we all suddenly start talking about menstruation, guess what? Our daughters won't have the stigma attached to it. So it's very fast, very quick that we can nix this stigma. We just need a critical mass of talkers, celebrators. I don't know if I can say that. People who celebrate their menstruation, people who are loud about their tampon needs or their cramps or their PMS, or for court's sakes, the menopause. The menopause, which we'll get to for sure. You actually visited members of the Lakota tribe. What did you learn about how they perceive a woman's cycle? Oh my, visiting Native Americans and sharing their story

was one of the most important and my favorite scenes in the whole film. Why? I've always known that Lakota has a Ishnati ceremony, which is a four-day ceremony when a girl gets her first period. And I thought, imagine that in the United States, where a majority of us live in this kind of a shame of menstruation and, you know, not talk about it and hide your tampon in the sleeve as

you go to the bathroom, or do you have a tampon? Whispering in the corridor with your colleagues. Here there was people today that were not only recognizing the moon cycle, but also saying that a woman is closer to the creator, to God, when she menstruates. To the point of Medina Matonis in the film speaks about the ceremony, how they're bringing back this beautiful ceremony and how they are aware of their moon cycles.

And you, when you menstruate, you should be careful what you're talking about because every word out of your mouth goes directly into the God's ear. Now, what a flip of understanding about the cycle. I really wanted to showcase that, that there is ways to celebrate menstruation and the menstruating body. And it's happening today in the United States of America. I want to go back a little bit to some of the myths that you encountered, because I want to know if you've learned anything that you were just really surprised by, because you laid out so many of them, one being that period blood attracts bears, another one that menstruating women shouldn't go

swimming in the ocean because they might attract sharks. Was there a myth that you encountered that you were surprised that people still believed? My friend shared that in Spain, her grandmother wouldn't let her make mayonnaise when she bleeds because mayonnaise wouldn't curl or whatever mayonnaise needs to do. Grandmother was convinced that menstruation affects your ability of making mayonnaise. That was fascinating. In Ecuador, I learned that women are not allowed to make sombreros because sombreros, the hats, the straw hats, take a long time to make. And apparently, women weave their menstrual ups and downs

within the tightness or looseness of how they knit the sombreros. And thus there was a prevailing idea that women are not good hat makers. Our guest today is Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, Lena Litte Ploplite. We're talking about her new documentary periodical, This is Fresh Air. Now, Lena, you also delve into the use of period apps to help track our cycles, which have been very helpful for women to connect to themselves and understand their bodies, as you mentioned earlier. But that information can be and is often sold to third parties. Why aren't they protected under HIPAA laws if we're basically inputting our private medical information into these apps?

That's a great question. Right. So HIPAA is only for your doctors and for your nurses. I think apps just don't fall under such acts, such a protection. So any app in the United States does not have any rules or regulations about how they deal with your data. And so what I've been telling everyone, and there's so many questions about this. I find that tracking your period, tracking your moods and your sexual drive and your tiredness and the amount of your blood and amount of your discharge is crucial to get to know your body and to start surfing the menstrual wave, if you will. How to do this? Surely there are a lot of apps. That's the easiest way to do it is to start tracking it. But here's the conundrum that any American-based, United States-based apps, well, they just come out from Silicon Valley.

You know, they are part of, you know, free marketplace. And so they can say, yes, we love your data. We would never, ever dare to show it to anyone else. And yet there is nothing out there to actually prevent them to do so. Right. And this is more than just about selling ads in your information, though, because there is this real fear, especially in states where abortion is banned, that this information can be used against you. Right. and that sucks. And thus we can say, you know what? Thank you, apps, but no thanks.

And so please use European Union-based tracking devices and apps like I've been telling everyone to use, CLUE, C-L-U-E, which is based in European Union and thus protected by European Union privacy laws. So you're good. So you're not, you don't need to stress about that. I feel like even if you're in super blue state in which you can get abortion, you probably still wouldn't want to, you know, get your Instagram app about some brownies or baby shoes because you

marked yourself not bleeding for a few months. You know, it just doesn't make one feel safe. Can you talk more about how the data from those tracking apps can be used against women? The data could be used in different ways if you are not protected by the privacy laws. The data could be used simply by it being sold to third parties, it being sold to, you know, your Instagram ads and whatnot. But it also could leak to governmental bodies. You've put in, I missed my period. I missed my period again, kind of a thing. So the app knew that you were pregnant.

Well, there was actually a case out of Mississippi with a woman, Latice Fisher is her name. She was charged with second degree murder after she lost her pregnancy at 36 weeks. And prosecutors used her online search history, which included a search on how to buy abortion pills online. That's not an app, but it is using technology to find out information. That information is tracked. Yes, and it's heartbreaking and outright scary. Let's talk about menopause for a minute. Love it.

Women experience shame and stigma for periods during their fertile years, and then they're all but forgotten when they get to their menopausal years. Why don't doctors seem to be universally proactive in giving menopausal women options and relief? I mean, we learned from a doctor in your documentary that menopausal women can have up to 200 symptoms. Most fascinating, isn't it? Well, menopause means you are one year since your last menstrual cycle. Right. And it has to be consecutive one year, consecutive 12 months since your last menstrual cycle, which means you won't get your menstrual cycle again, which means welcome to the new you. Welcome to the matriarchy years is what I like to

call it. But before we go to that amazing boom, you know, marker in time, entering the next stage of your life, there is this thing called perimenopause, which majority of menstruators don't even know what the hell does that mean. Perimenopause is how we beautifully explain through the experts in the film is kind of like puberty in reverse. It's those last years of your period. If you remember when you entered your period, first few years were kind of funky and zits and anger and crying and random periods, that sort of thing. Well, they say that it can also happen on the other book end of your cycle. And thus it is normal. And thus 200 symptoms, sometimes including, you know, hot flashes or night sweats or forgetfulness or rage. Naomi Watts shares her wild perimenopause

story in the film. We're going to get to, okay, so we're going to get to Naomi Watts's story. She shares that she experienced menopausal symptoms in her 30s. The average age to start menopause is around 51, 52. Let's listen to her explain. My cycle, it came late and it ended early. But 36 seemed super early and there were all these women having babies in their late 40s. So, but I did go to the doctor and he said, yeah, it looks like you're getting close to menopause. Now, there was no mention of perimenopause. There was no, I don't even think that word existed.

You know, there was nothing said to me about it in the doctor's office. Certainly no friends were using that word. I would crack jokes about having estrogen dips to sort of see if how, oh, I'm having that too. Let's just see if that sparks up the conversation. And it was sort of met with crickets. Nothing. My friends were clearly either not there in that phase of their life or they weren't willing to talk about it.

That's actress Naomi Watts talking about her experience with menopause for the documentary periodical. Lena, there's a lot at stake, as you mentioned earlier, for women to speak about this because there is so much expectation put on being youthful, especially in Hollywood. I think it's really interesting that you're doing this reframing because you're basically saying, OK, once all of those hormones are gone, a lot of women are reevaluating their lives, a lot of time for the better. What did people tell you about that time of life in this reframing? Yes. First of all, I adore Naomi Watts and the fact that she started speaking out loud about her perimenopause and menopause experience, which aligned so well with our timing to have her in our film and just to hear a really human story that even the celebrity of the caliber of Naomi Watts still didn't have the answers she wanted, which proves to you that this issue is very real. And it's not just about specific parts of the population. Literally everyone going through perimenopause and menopause find themselves a little lost, scared and nobody to talk to, which is thankfully changing rapidly because of these women are speaking out.

How freaking cool. Like we are literally living the revolution of menopause. Lena, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much, Tanya. This was really, really, really fun. Lena Lita-Poplita's new documentary is called Periodical. It's now streaming on Peacock. Coming up, book critic Maureen Corrigan shares her list of the 10 best books of 2023.

This is Fresh Air. Maureen Corrigan's list of the 10 best books of 2023 is ready, and she says she only wishes the list could be longer. If you were to judge a year solely by its books, you'd have to say 2023 was outstanding. Here's my list of the year's 10 best books. Let's start with nonfiction. In her charged memoir, How to Say Babylon, Safia Sinclair summons up her childhood in Jamaica and charts her gradual revolt against her Rastafarian upbringing. To call that upbringing strict would be like calling water wet. Sinclair's father, a celebrated reggae musician subordinate wife. Someone, as she says, ordinary and unselfed, carried her into a wider world. Monsters by Claire Dieterer is cultural

criticism at its most incisive and wry. In this slim book, Dieterer, who started out as a film critic, dives into the vexed issue of whether art created by men and some women who've done monstrous things can still be considered great. Should geniuses like Picasso, Dieterer asks, get a hall pass for their behavior? David Grand, whose 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon is now a film by Martin Scorsese, wrote a gripping new work of narrative history this year. Part Robinson Crusoe, part Lord of the Flies, The Wager tells the tale of a British ship of that name that broke apart off the coast of Patagonia in 1741. Some of the stranded sailors patched together a rickety vessel and sailed 2,500 miles to Brazil. But then a second group of sailors from the wager miraculously surfaced, and the official survival story became much more complicated.

On to fiction. Just the title of Laurie Moore's latest novel tells you how singular and strange her vision is. I Am Homeless, If This Is Not My, intertwines a Civil War story with a contemporary tale in which a man takes the body of his deceased beloved on a road trip. Moore here movingly literalizes the desire to have some more time with a loved one who's died. Up with the Sun by Thomas Mallon is a novel about showbiz strivers in mid to late 20th century America. It zeroes in on the real-life actor Dick Kallman, who for a time was a protege of Lucille Balls. Mallon, whose novel Fellow Travelers, about closeted gay men during the McCarthy era, is now a TV miniseries, is one of our most evocative, and blessedly, one of our drollest

novelists. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride is mostly set in the historically black and immigrant Jewish neighborhood of Chicken Hill in Potsdam, Pennsylvania in 1925. When the state decides to institutionalize a 12-year-old black boy who's been branded deaf and dumb, a group of neighbors violates boundaries of color and class to save him. If you think that premise sounds sentimental, you haven't read McBride, who contains the chaos of the world in his sentences. Talk about contained chaos. Catherine Lacy's novel, The Biography of X, is the story of a widow during what she calls the boneless days of her grief, trying to piece together the truth about her wife, an artist who called herself X. Real

life figures like Patti Smith and the New York school poet Frank O'Hara trespass onto the pages of this edgy and unexpectedly affecting novel. Paul Harding's This Other Eden is inspired by true events on Malaga Island, Maine, which was once home to an interracial fishing community. After government officials, under the sway of the pseudoscience of eugenics, inspected the island in 1911, Malaga's residents were forcibly removed. Harding's novel about this horror is infused with dynamism, bravado, and melancholy. Colley. Absolution by Alice McDermott tells the story of Tricia, a shy newlywed in 1963 who arrives in Vietnam with her husband, an engineer on loan to Navy intelligence. There she meets Charlene, a strawberry blonde dynamo who conscripts Tricia into her army of do-gooders. McDermott, one of our most nuanced novelists, suggests parallels between the women's insistent charity and the growing American military

intervention in Vietnam. Justin Torres's Blackouts won this year's National Book Award for Fiction. At its center is an extended deathbed conversation between two gay men about sex, family ostracism, Puerto Rican identity, and the films they love, like Kiss of the Spider Woman, an inspiration for this novel. Torres's title, Blackouts, refers to the blacking out of pre-Stonewall accounts of queer lives, what the younger of the two characters here describes as stories of something grand, a subversive variant culture, an inheritance. These books of 2023 are outstanding, but so too have been the efforts to ban books this year. Here's to reading widely and freely in the new year. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. You can find all of her year-end recommendations on our website at freshair.npr.org.

And to browse more than 380 titles recommended by NPR staff and critics, visit bookswelove at npr.org slash bestbooks. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, comedian and actor Kenan Thompson. He's best known as the longest-running cast member on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live and for starring in Nickelodeon shows like All That and Kenan and Kel. His new book, When I Was Your Age, Life Lessons, Funny Stories, and Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown, takes readers behind the curtain of his life and career with stories he's never shared before. I hope you can join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and to get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Moseley.