A Socially Engaged Buddhist Witch Reading List

60+ Books on Abolition, Mutual Aid, Matriarchy, and Spiritual Practice for Building a Better World

I believe in small-scale governance and large-scale care. In matriarchal leadership, abolitionist ethics, and mutual aid over militarism. In reproductive freedom, land back, universal healthcare, and free high-quality education. In community autonomy that doesn’t slide into cult dynamics. And in a spirituality that is communal and personal—not governing—and deeply ethical.

This reading list is for those of us who are trying to make sense of what’s happening. We know the systems we live under are unsustainable. We feel the ache of injustice in our bones. But we also know that to transform the world, we need more than hot takes and vibes. We need language. We need frameworks. We need lineage.

We also need to start identifying the problems clearly, for ourselves and with each other. If we want a future that is different from the one we’ve inherited, we can’t just react. We have to root. We have to build. This is a small-batch spiritual practice—one where we draw from our personal and communal spirituality to inform a secular, inclusive political and structural vision that works at both the local and global levels.

This is how we gather our ingredients. This is how we cast a spell.

It’s not a syllabus. It’s a spiral. You can start anywhere. But the invitation is to move through each phase with care, circling back and forth, letting the ideas interact with your lived experience. Let it change you. Let it give shape to your knowing.

And never, ever forget—eat the rich.

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✨ Pre-Phase: A Portal Opens

Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, by Silvia Federici

Federici weaves together feminist critique, the memory of the commons, spiritual resistance, and practical pathways to post-capitalist life.

Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism, by Thich Nhat Hanh
These guidelines are the groundwork for spiritually-rooted social action, perfect for readers stepping through the portal into a path of sacred engagement.

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🌑 Phase One: Grounding in Grief and Vision

This phase invites us to look unflinchingly at what is broken—systems, stories, selves—and begin the work of reclaiming our language, grief, and agency. We start in the rubble, but we’re not alone there. This is where liberation begins.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire
A foundational work on consciousness-raising and the transformative power of education. This book names the invisible structures of oppression, and helps us start naming our way out.

Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Davis
A sharp, short read that dares to ask the question most won’t: do we need prisons at all? A gateway to abolitionist thinking rooted in Black feminist tradition.

Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde
Poetic essays on power, difference, and radical self-regard. Lorde offers us language where most systems offer silence.

Cultish, by Amanda Montell
Explores how language fuels groupthink, spiritual manipulation, and the soft edges of control—even in communities that think they're woke.

Grievers, by adrienne maree brown
A speculative novella where grief becomes contagious. An abolitionist fable that centers care, loss, and collective healing.

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
A cautionary tale of censorship, distraction, and the slow erasure of thought. A surprisingly tender call to remember.

Combating Cult Mind Control, by Steven Hassan
A former Moonie turned therapist breaks down how coercive systems operate and how to resist them—spiritually, socially, politically.

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🌒 Phase Two: Sensing Through Soil and Story

Here, we re-root in story, land, and the memory of care. These works help us recover ancestral wisdom, relational economies, and new-old ways of being that resist commodification and center regeneration.

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A poetic blend of Indigenous wisdom and plant science that teaches us how to live in right relationship with land, memory, and gratitude.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber
An anthropological dismantling of the myth that barter preceded money. Offers a radical reinterpretation of economics, obligation, and power.

We Do This 'Til We Free Us, by Mariame Kaba
Abolition as love, as organizing, as vision. Practical and soul-stretching essays on how we move from punishment to possibility.

Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin
A speculative ethnography of a future society that lives in ecological harmony. Less plot, more pulse. A reimagining of home.

Community: The Structure of Belonging, by Peter Block
Explores how we gather, who we include, and what it means to create spaces of shared accountability and radical welcome.

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
A gripping family saga that doubles as an indictment of colonialism and missionary zeal. Shows how power can masquerade as care.

Take Back Your Life, by Janja Lalich
Written by a sociologist and former cult member, this guide helps readers reclaim their agency after high-control groups or ideologies.

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🌓 Phase Three: Unlearning Power, Practicing Care

These texts support the inner and outer work of unlearning domination, tending to our inner lives, and practicing more just, liberatory ways of being with one another.

Caliban and the Witch, by Silvia Federici
A historical and feminist analysis of capitalism’s birth through the control of women’s bodies and communal life. A radical reframing of European witch hunts and their aftershocks.

All About Love, by bell hooks
A profound meditation on love as a political and ethical force. hooks challenges individualism and reclaims love as radical community care.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers
A hopeful, cozy sci-fi tale of a tea monk and a robot. This gentle speculative fiction models relational integrity and post-collapse tenderness.

Turning to One Another, by Meg Wheatley
A guide to meaningful conversation as the basis for change. Invites us to lead with listening and shape movements from dialogue, not domination.

The Overstory, by Richard Powers
An epic novel about trees, resistance, and interconnection. Shows how environmental justice can be mythic, intimate, and deeply rooted in grief and wonder.

Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger, by Lama Rod Owens
This book is the spiritual work of deconditioning. It teaches us to hold anger as sacred and transform it without spiritual bypass.

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🌔 Phase Four: Reclaiming the Commons

Once we begin to unlearn domination, we can remember how to live together. This phase focuses on the structures, tools, and narratives we need to rebuild shared life beyond scarcity and isolation.

Governing the Commons, by Elinor Ostrom
A Nobel-winning exploration of how communities successfully manage shared resources without state control or privatization. A blueprint for cooperative sovereignty.

The Empowerment Manual, by Starhawk
A practical and spiritual guide for collaborative groups. Helps collectives resist burnout, address conflict, and thrive without hierarchy.

Border and Rule, by Harsha Walia
Reveals how borders, racism, and state violence are co-constructed. Calls for a politics of abolition, land, and collective liberation.

Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow
A post-scarcity sci-fi novel where people abandon capitalism to build something freer. Explores reputation economies, mutual aid, and collapse.

The Powerbook, by Jeanette Winterson
A queer, time-traveling meditation on identity, power, and desire. Blurs the line between love story and political manifesto.

Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg
A working-class trans epic that viscerally explores gender, solidarity, and survival under brutal policing. A novel of resistance and kinship.

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🌕 Phase Five: Embodying Abundance and Return

Here we explore stories of reclamation, ecological belonging, and sacred memory, charting paths of healing and re-enchantment in our bodies and communities.

Take Back the Economy, by Katherine Gibson & J.K. Gibson-Graham
A practical toolkit for imagining and enacting post-capitalist economies. Emphasizes community wealth, ethical markets, and joyful interdependence.

The Great Cosmic Mother, by Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor
A mythic, historical, and artistic excavation of goddess traditions. Reclaims matriarchal roots and re-enchants our cultural memory.

World as Lover, World as Self, by Joanna Macy
A Buddhist systems thinker reflects on ecology, grief, and deep time. A guide for activists whose hearts are breaking.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers
A joyful sci-fi exploration of chosen family, ethics, and diplomacy. A gentle vision of what compassionate interdependence can feel like.

The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon
A foundational anti-colonial text that exposes the psychic and structural wounds of empire—and calls for revolutionary healing.

Dirty River, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
A queer, disabled, mixed-race femme’s memoir of survival and solidarity. Centers trauma healing, desire, and politicized tenderness.

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🌖 Phase Six: Remembering Land and Lineage

These books teach us to honor what has come before and to move forward with reverence and responsibility.

Our History is the Future, by Nick Estes
A powerful account of Indigenous resistance, linking the Dakota Access Pipeline protests to centuries of anti-colonial struggle. Land defense as legacy and future.

As We Have Always Done, by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
A poetic and political call to live Indigenous knowledge through refusal, resurgence, and relational practice. A declaration of sovereignty through story.

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein
A meditation on interbeing and transformation, urging us to shift from domination toward a story of sacred connection and mutual care.

The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline
In a future ravaged by climate collapse, Indigenous youth are hunted for their ability to dream. A chilling, tender novel of resistance and remembrance.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
A dystopian tale of sacrifice and complicity. A haunting meditation on the commodification of life and the silence around structural harm.

The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin
A genre-defying epic of systemic oppression, ancestral power, and the literal cracking of the earth. Feminist speculative fiction at its most potent.

Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko
A healing novel grounded in Native storytelling. Reweaves identity, land, and trauma into a sacred, circular structure of renewal.

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🌗 Phase Seven: Dreaming New Governance

From neighborhood meetings to global justice, this phase explores how we gather, decide, and build the structures that hold us. These texts imagine governance as care, creativity, and collective clarity.

The Next Revolution, by Murray Bookchin
Explores the intersection of direct democracy, ecological ethics, and libertarian socialism. A foundational text for reimagining how power can be held in commons.

The Art of Gathering, by Priya Parker
A guide to creating more intentional and transformative gatherings, from house meetings to movement assemblies. Beautifully applies to political and spiritual spaces alike.

Healing Justice Lineages, edited by Cara Page and Erica Woodland
An intergenerational archive of healing-centered social justice work. Brings ritual and political action into shared practice.

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
A tale of two worlds—one anarchist, one capitalist. Le Guin explores time, freedom, and what it takes to live without masters.

Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
A climate fiction epic that dares to ask how we might survive—and govern—through catastrophe. Systems-level change meets human-scale drama.

Afterland, by Lauren Beukes
In a world where men have died off, a mother flees with her son. A speculative thriller exploring gender, control, and survival.

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🌘 Phase Eight: Protecting the Sacred from the State

These works sharpen our understanding of carceral logic, ideological capture, and state violence. And they help us protect what is sacred, subversive, and free.

Discipline and Punish, by Michel Foucault
A deep dive into the birth of modern surveillance and punishment. Foucault’s analysis helps us see how carceral logic permeates even our most intimate institutions.

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, by Robert Jay Lifton
Based on firsthand research with Chinese reeducation camps, this classic study reveals the conditions that breed ideological extremism and closed systems of thought.

American Democratic Socialism, by Gary Dorrien
A sweeping historical survey of religious and moral roots of socialism in the U.S. Highlights figures who grounded economic justice in spiritual and ethical values.

Dreaming the Dark, by Starhawk
A blend of pagan ritual, feminist theory, and political resistance. This book reminds us that magic and movement-building can—and must—go hand in hand.

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
A dystopian classic that feels increasingly prophetic. Atwood’s tale warns of what happens when patriarchy, theocracy, and state power converge.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison
A haunting and lyrical story of memory, motherhood, and slavery’s afterlife. Morrison exposes how the state’s violence lives on in the body and the land.

Modern Tantric Buddhism, by Lama Justin von Bujdoss

Written by my chaplaincy supervisor at Riker’s Island Jail, Lama Justin calls for a dharma that is embodied, queer-friendly, justice-oriented, and unafraid to confront the darkness of the systems we live in.

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If you read even a few of these, you’re already walking the path. We’re not just reacting anymore. We’re studying. Building. Remembering forward. This is how we cast a spell. This is how we learn to live in the future we crave.

In spiritual solidarity,
🧿 Constant Craving✨

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