Welcome back to the Macro Stack! This month we share a few reading ideas:)
What I Wished My People Had Known, the Psychiatric Green Book: A Guide for Black Folks. Black Emotional & Mental Health (BEAM) Collective. (2026). Americans purchased and shared “Green Books” designed to help guide travelers toward safe and welcoming motels, restaurants, and attractions in an unsafe Jim Crow America. Recognizing the ways in which current medical psychiatric system practices and policies also place Black Americans at risk, the BEAM collective created this “Green” guide to help individuals and families negotiate a potentially unhelpful medical system. The current guides include legal guidelines for California and Georgia and help provide culturally relevant advocacy, legal rights, self-care, and support strategies for Black Americans negotiating systems of care. The guides are affordable, and PDF versions can be purchased for $5 or whatever a person can afford. Hard copies are $15. The guides can be purchased here: https://beam-community.myshopify.com/products/what-i-wish-my-people-had-known-the-psychiatric-green-book-a-guide-for-black-folks-digital
Power for All: How it Really Works and Why It’s Everyone’s Business (2021). Julie Battilana & Tiziana Casciaro. A focus of Macro Motivational Interviewing is understanding how motivation, autonomy, and choice are impacted by systems, rules and practices that keep them from being able to act on their interests. Going up against systems (e.g. health care, housing, or legal systems) can seem impossible and inaccessible for the average person. This book speaks to how everyone can understand power, obtain resources and influence others, even if they are not in leadership positions. This book is a helpful guide for understanding steps individuals and/or groups can take to identify resources and influence the behavior of others and is essential reading for the Macro MI practitioner.
Churn: The Tension that Divides Us and How to Overcome It (2026). In this new work, the renowned social psychologist and Stanford University professor emeritus Claude M. Steele examines “churn,” the mental agitation and physical stress experienced in diverse settings in everyday life—and the surprising role that trust-building can achieve in reducing churn across identity divides. With powerful examples, Steele points to a present and future where we can each contribute constructively, fostering relationships and communities rooted in love and commitment. TL; DR: https://www.eliseloehnen.com/p/when-we-feel-churn-claude-steele-phd
Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia (2024). In this National Book Award Finalist work, philosopher and Cornell University professor Kate Manne draws on personal experience and rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to counter it. Manne proposes a new politics of “body reflexivity,” a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world for (ourselves and no one else!), advocates for dismantling the forces that control and constrain us, and for remaking the world to accommodate people of every size. (Audio book read by the author) TL; DR: https://www.eliseloehnen.com/p/where-does-fatphobia-come-from-kate
No! The Art and Activism of Complaining (2026). Independent feminist author Sara Ahmed describes the world of complaints: where they live, how they’re made, who receives them, who buries them and where, all on the way to spotlighting complaints as a means of resistance. Mostly, to be heard as complaining is not to be heard. Nonetheless, Ahmed inspires our persistence to meaningfully say “No!” and build new collectivities. (Audio book read by the author.)
Not Built in a Day (2026). Historian Emma Southon chronicles the story of Ancient Rome, exploring how the empire was built, fueled, and shaped by its enslaved people. Fascinating and revealing accounts detail the lives of those enslaved as well as how Rome—like most empires—could not function without slavery that underpinned its entire economy. (Audio book read by the author.)
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (2016). While a decade old, this fascinating book by mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neill points to the deep roots and problematic consequences of the age of the algorithm. The effects on our lives are undeniable—where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for this or that, and how we are assessed by institutions and authorities. (Audio book read by the author.) If you want a newer and also excellent one by this author, check out The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation (2022).
Music: Trio—After the Gold Rush
From the Studio Museum of Harlem:
Quote: James Baldwin
“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance—is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.”
Two more reading suggestions:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/aug/23/black-august-study-meditate-read
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-standards-of-care