Vendela Vida’s Nonfiction Picks

Darryl Estrine

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


For a special section in our May/June issue, we asked some of our favorite writers about their favorite nonfiction books. Here are The Believer cofounder and novelist Vendela Vida’s answers:

Mother Jones:
Which nonfiction book do you foist upon all of your friends and? relatives? Why??

Vendela Vida: For years I’ve been telling everyone to read Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. LeBlanc followed two Latina girls in the Bronx—and by extension their families and boyfriends—over the course of 10 years. It’s a work of journalism, but you feel you’re seeing the drug dealers and boys and babies that populate these girls’ lives through their own eyes.

Recently, I’ve been recommending Patti Smith’s Just Kids. I read it when it came out earlier this year, and its precise prose and honesty floored me. It made me want to be living in New York in my twenties all over again. It made me wish I had kept a journal as religiously as Smith evidently did. You could have never heard a Patti Smith song and still enjoy the book.

MJ: Which nonfiction book have you reread the most times? What’s so good? about it?

VV: By virtue of having edited them, I’ve probably reread Nick Hornby’s three collections of essays for the Believer (The Polysyllabic Spree, Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, and Shakespeare Wrote for Money) more than any other series of books. In his columns, Hornby chronicles the books he’s read and the books he’s bought and he discusses how they pertain—or don’t pertain—to his life at the time. Read the columns over the course of a few years, and you’ll really feel you’ve been living next door to a fellow reader, catching glimpses of his life while he goes on vacation, raises children, makes his way through many, many books, quits smoking, and quits quitting smoking. I still turn to the columns whenever I want to read something funny, and whenever I’m looking for suggestions of what to read next. It was thanks to Hornby’s mention of LeBlanc’s book in his column that I first read Random Family.???

MJ:
Is there a nonfiction book that someone recommended to you when you ?were a kid that has left a lasting impression? Who recommended it, and? why was it so special?

VV: A professor of mine at Columbia recommended I read Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem when I was 21. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it completely changed the way I write and the way I read. I loved the way she inserted herself into the pieces—just the right amount. You get the sense when you’re reading her essays that she’s noticing things no one else does; there could be a thousand journalists in a room, and no one would pick up on the same truths and turns of phrase and details about an outfit that Didion does. And she describes even the most chaotic of times and places—the Haight-Ashbury in the late ’60s, for example—in well-crafted and precise, marmoreal prose. I tell everyone who wants to write nonfiction that they have to start with Slouching Toward Bethlehem.

MJ:
You edit a magazine that publishes a variety of essays and other ?nonfiction. What would you say are some of the qualities that contribute to a compelling work of nonfiction?

VV: ?It’s all in what the writer notices. If you’re reading a piece of nonfiction and feel happier that the writer’s the one making the observations, rather than wishing you were there to be making them yourself, then you know they’re doing a good job. I read Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs in a day, and prior to reading it, I wasn’t at all interested in British soccer. Actually, I’m still not interested in British soccer, but while reading the book I seemed to forget that minor detail. At a certain point, the guide is just as important as the scenery.


If you buy a book using a Bookshop link on this page, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate