On a long flight recently, I read Jessica Stanley’s Consider Yourself Kissed in one sitting. Without giving too much away, the book opens in 2022 with a woman leaving a man, then goes back to 2013 and slowly works forward. But the story is so richly detailed and engrossing that by the time I got back to 2022, I’d completely forgotten what I learned in the first few pages. Cue the tears in seat 14A. If you’re also in the mood for a moving read, I asked four women to share the books that brought them to tears…
Sanaë Lemoine, novelist and cookbook writer
Are you a big crier?
I went through a divorce not too long ago, so I was crying almost every day in private and public. But in general, I don’t cry a lot and books almost never make me cry. So, it’s pretty special when it happens.
Sanaë’s bookshelf
Do you remember the first book that made you cry?
In college, I read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion in the same week. It was my sophomore year, and my boyfriend had just broken up with me. The books were assigned reading for two different classes, and I read them on the floor of my room, sobbing. They’re about grief and loss, and although my heartbreak felt very small in comparison, they provided the exact comfort I needed.
Are there any books you’ve read recently that made you cry?
A few weeks ago, I cried on the subway as I finished Dinaw Mengetsu’s exceptional novel Someone Like Us. There’s a layering and circularity that compounds over time, as memories and conversations weave together — it feels magical. Then there’s the dialogue, unadorned yet brimming with feeling.
Also, Small Rain by Garth Greenwell — which takes place mostly in a hospital over the course of a week, as the narrator has a near-death medical emergency. What surprised me, then moved me to tears, was the love story between the narrator and his partner. How specific and universal their love was. It was fragile, tender, and resilient.
Katie Sturino, Megababe founder and novelist
Do you cry a lot?
I’m a huge crier in day-to-day life, so you can only imagine how much I am affected by books. My mom and I read All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny out loud last summer, and we had to have my husband John take over during one part because neither of us could get the words out.
Katie’s nightstand
What books have made you cry lately?
I am an audiobook person, and wow, Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President by E. Jean Carroll [about sexual abuse and defamation by Trump] was hard to listen to. I listen to my books when I’m walking outside, but I highly recommend this book even if it means crying in public!
Then a few weeks ago, I cried reading my own book, Sunny Side Up. During my book launch event in Boston, I read a paragraph about how many of us are rewriting our stories, even though we thought that we’d be at the ending by now. Is it weird to cry at your own work? I hope not. I felt like it was something a lot of people could relate to, and I was proud of myself for writing it.
Jamia Wilson, author and executive editor at Random House
Are you a big crier?
I feel deeply, and I’ll ugly-cry if a story hits a nerve. Recently, I shed tears of joy while rereading Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou. Tucked inside, I found a beautiful note from my late mother, Freda, written in 1995. In it, she expressed her love and appreciation for the woman I was becoming at 15. The book, a well-worn edition that lost its cover long ago in one of many moves, remains one of my most cherished possessions.
Jamia’s well-worn copy
What’s another book that made you cry?
I remember reading bell hooks’s Wounds of Passion on a bus ride from Siena to Rome during my semester abroad in 2000. I cried throughout the entire journey, highlighting passages, dog-earing pages, and turning up my Discman to the Stealing Beauty soundtrack. There was something those wise pages that told me this book would be a lifelong guide, one I would return to through reckonings, celebrations, revelations, and hard truths. I’ve since reread it at least 20 times, and I cry every single time.
What’s the latest book that brought out tears?
There’s No Turning Back by Alba de Céspedes. Set in fascist Italy during World War II, the story draws from her own experiences to show the quiet strength and difficult choices of ordinary women resisting oppression, reminding us how courage in everyday acts is essential in the fight against authoritarianism. This hopeful but defiant book’s deep historical roots and its urgent call to keep fighting for justice and freedom felt deeply relevant to the struggles we face today.
Alisha Ramos, creator of Downtime newsletter
Are you a big crier?
Generally, I’m a fairly stoic person.
So, has a book ever made you cry?
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is one. It’s a beautifully raw memoir that recounts the author’s experience caring for her mother after a cancer diagnosis. I vividly remember a scene where her mother cries out from the next room, ‘Apeoyo, apeoyo’ (‘It hurts, it hurts’). It moved me to tears, especially as I thought about my own mother, who is Korean.
What’s the last book that made you cry?
Sorrow & Bliss by Meg Mason, a book about mental health (among other things). It felt so real and helped me feel seen during a dark time. I both laughed and cried.
What books have made you cry? Where were you? I’m an easy crier, but it turns out people are more prone to cry on planes.
P.S. More favorite books, and five things I noticed at a NYC bookstore.
(Top bookcase photo by Alpha Smoot from Joanna’s first Brooklyn apartment. Photo of Sanaë by Julia Robbs for Cup of Jo. Photos of Katie and Jamia by Christine Han for Cup of Jo. Sorrow & Bliss photo from Instagram. Other photos provided by the subjects.)
