Prompt 250. My Summer Reading

& Pooja Lakshmin on outsiders

Me at age eight in my favorite reading perch, La Marsa, Tunisia

Hi friend,

Over the last few years, I’ve been in a bit of a reading drought. It started as the pandemic hit—at the same time I was finishing my MFA and final edits on my memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. My head was too full and I was so fatigued that I found myself reaching for television to relax or escape. That only intensified when I reentered cancer treatment in late 2021.

But in the last few weeks, I’ve gone from drought to deluge, losing myself in one novel and then the next. My husband Jon is both amused and annoyed because I keep asking for “quiet time” (translation: no talking until I finish my book). I feel like my kid self again. Back then, I’d get so immersed in a book that I simply couldn’t put it down. I would read while walking down the street—more than once, I collided with a street lamp.

All summer, I’ve been asking friends and acquaintances for their recommendations. The bulk has been novels. I raced through Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour, then Circe by Madeline Miller, Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer-winning stunner Demon Copperhead. At the beach, I devoured Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. But I also have some nonfiction coming up, which will hit a different tone—Stay True by Hua Hsu, and Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. After that, another novel to lose myself in: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

Making and remaking this summer reading list, I was reminded of a piece called “My Lifetime Reading Plan,” where the culture critic

Ted Gioia

outlines how he educated himself through books. He issues a disclaimer that his method is overly rigorous and is probably not for everyone, but personally I love the rigor. I’ve been drawn to a rigorous reading syllabus as far back as middle school, when my two best friends transferred from our public school to a private all-girls boarding school. I desperately wanted to go, but my parents weren’t in a position to send me. Instead, I looked up the boarding school’s reading list and worked my way through it.

Books have been my best teachers over the years, about writing and life, and they’ve also been beloved companions. The other day, Jon and some friends went on a little excursion, and I thought, “I could go, or I could stay here with my book and River.” I was so content in my own company—living among these characters, enjoying how it felt for my brain to be immersed in new turns of phrase, to encounter words that open new worlds, that give me new language for seeing my surroundings—that I decided to stay.

Reading has always unlocked a portal to a rich and abundant solitude, and I’m so happy to find myself immersed again. As much as I love other forms of entertainment—as golden as this age of television is—books will always feel like a refuge. Especially when I was younger, when our family was on the move and so often I felt in-between, reading was a place I felt safe. It was my own world, and I didn’t have to worry about fitting in.

That was probably the most defining experience of my adolescence—that feeling of being in-between, even on the outside. It’s something we’ve all experienced at some point in our lives, I think, albeit to varying degrees, and social as we humans are, it leaves a mark. And today’s guest contributor, Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, writes about that searing sense of isolation with such knowing and nuance—about how it can unmake us, about how it makes us who we are. Read on for more.

Sending love,

Suleika

P.S. If you’ve got a reading list going—of any genre, from light summer reads to serious literary tomes—I’d love to know! Drop the list and its organizing principles in the comments!

My favorite hometown bookstore, Lyrical Ballad

One Item of Note—

• If you missed our last meeting of the Hatch, you can find a recap along with the reading and prompt here. Led by our beloved Holly Huitt, it was a transportive hour, where the community focused on setting as a way into writing about childhood and summertime.

Frank Duffield, The Market (c. 1950)

Prompt 250. Outsiders by Pooja Lakshmin 

The summer of 2016, I took a month-long sabbatical to live in Rome. I had just graduated from my psychiatry residency at George Washington University and was a newly minted psychiatrist specializing in women's mental health. I rented a room in the outskirts of the city and regularly braved the heat to take an Italian language class, visit the Villa Borghese, and work on my memoir.

This happened to be that tumultuous period when Britain was withdrawing from the European Union and Donald Trump was rising to power in the United States. Every time I'd pick out a nice-ish restaurant in the hip Trastevere neighborhood and show up ready to cosplay the vita bella, I'd get turned away. I wondered whether my jean skirts and tanks were too casual. I told myself that maybe it wasn’t worth it for a restaurant to seat one person during dinner (even when I was certain I could’ve sat at the bar).

Then, towards the end of my trip, I was at a market near my Airbnb where I’d gotten to know some of the stall owners, when someone aggressively shooed me away from his fruit stand. Quickly a shopkeeper came up behind me and shouted at him, "No, no—don't worry! She's American." Afterwards, confused and shaken, I called my partner and told him what happened. “They thought you were Roma," he explained, referring to a traditionally itinerant and marginalized ethnic group who live throughout Europe. “Be careful.”

It was a light bulb moment: this was not my first time being an outsider. My mind immediately went back to my childhood, to the white, upper middle-class Philadelphia suburb where I was bullied and ostracized for my brown skin and "different" name. I felt a mix of knowing and shame—knowing that I had felt like an outsider in Rome, and shame that I had not immediately named but instead tried to explain it away, blamed myself, internalized the discrimination. After that incident, I walked around much more guarded and with a sense of sadness—for myself and for all outsiders.

After I returned to Washington DC, I had lunch with a mentor from a community psychiatry clinic where I had worked for two years. I told him about what happened and he said, “They didn't see you as a doctor. They saw you as a young brown woman.” I bristled, but I allowed myself to receive his words and felt strangely comforted. To hear it laid out so plainly and bluntly was a balm. Even in Washington DC, there were moments where being a doctor wasn't enough, like when a patient would call the intake line and say they preferred an American doctor.

All of this reminded me why I chose to become a psychiatrist in the first place. I wanted to help others carry the burden of being on the outside, whether because of how their brains worked, their skin color, their gender, their identity, or a combination of these factors. After that incident in Rome, I became more vocal (usually frowned upon in psychiatry) with my patients, advising them not to internalize systemic inequities. Instead, I tried to validate their hurt and their anger, and to commiserate too. Through my writing, my advocacy, and yes, even in my office, I could show them they weren’t alone. 

Your prompt for the week:

Write about a moment when you realized you were on the outside. What did it feel like? Did you rage, did you cry, or both? Who held your grief with you? How did the experience change you? What came next?

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

Today’s Contributor—

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD is a psychiatrist, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and New York Times contributor focused on women’s mental health and dismantling toxic wellness culture. Her new book, Real Self-Care (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included), has been featured on Good Morning America, NPR’s Code Switch, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and is being translated into eight languages. Pooja is the founder and CEO of Gemma, the women’s mental health education platform centering impact and equity. You can subscribe to her free newsletter, Therapy Takeaway.

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