I’m looking for books — they could be fiction or nonfiction — that elicit a strong feeling of guilt in the reader. Not that the reader identifies with the guilty or ashamed feeling of a character, but that something about the book causes guilt directly in the reader.
Just as a hypothetical example, there might be a book that sets things up to elicit a certain negative assumption on the part of the reader, that turns out to be incorrect, and the whole thing is maybe revealing of stereotypes the reader has but isn’t aware of.
by SnowyBlackberry
3 Comments
Kind of fits in with your description – {{Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu}}
I have *not* read any of these, but I have heard the Quebecois horror author [Patrick Senécal](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1302085.Patrick_Sen_cal) writes books like this. Such as for instance, starting with a scene where it looks like someone vulnerable is being victimized, but then turning your expectations on their head and it wasn’t what you thought. I am far too much of a wimp to read much horror myself, though!
The duology [The Sparrow and Children of God](https://www.goodreads.com/series/62065-the-sparrow) will do this when read together, but the first book alone did not make me feel guilty.
Guilty, eh? How shitty would you like to feel?
*Caste* –Isabel Wilkerson
*The Uninhabitable Earth* –David Wallace-Wells
*This is Vegan Propaganda* –Ed Winters
*Justice for Animals* –Martha Nussbaum
*The Moral Arc* –Michael Shermer
*Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference* –William MacAskill
*Braiding Sweetgrass* –Robin Wall Kimmerer
*Famine, Affluence, and Morality* –Peter Singer
*Empire of the Summer Moon* –S.C. Gwynne