It’s impossible to disassociate her with the years spent gracing runways and magazine covers, but it’s equally hard, these days, to think of Turlington Burns as anything but the activist she has molded herself into. Nearly a decade ago, she founded Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit dedicated to helping mothers around the world through pregnancy and childbirth. Here, a look at the books on her nightstand.
The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, by Melinda Gates
I’ve always been a big fan of Melinda Gates, and because she has traveled so extensively working on some of the world’s toughest challenges—from poverty to food insecurity to child marriage—she has so much to share. Through the stories of the women she brings to light, Gates makes an impossible-to-ignore moral case that equality simply cannot wait.
The Farm, by Joanne Ramos
Why: We are living in a moment in which the confluence of so many issues—gender, class, religion, reproductive rights—is making daily headlines. A somewhat less heavy-handed version of The Handmaid’s Tale, this book positions surrogacy in the hot seat as both an allegory and a warning about the consequences of the sacrifices we all make.
The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation, by Jodie Patterson
A memoir about a mother and her journey of becoming a parent to a transgender child, this book is poignant, honest, and filled with love. It’s wrought with insights about race, gender, identity, familial love, and tolerance that, frankly, the world could use much more of right now.
What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most, by Elizabeth Benedict
This book of personal essays from incredible writers is, as a whole, a lovely journey into the lives of moms, and the gifts, both literal and metaphoric, that they bestow upon their daughters. Each on its own says much about both the author and her mother, and makes for a perfect summer read that can be easily picked up over and over again.
