I am a long standing advice columnist fan. As a young teen, the only part of the paper that interested me beyond the comics was the advice column. In my local paper, these were conveniently placed on the facing page. Ann Landers, her sister Dear Abby, Miss Manners - I was fascinated by the glimpse into other people's lives and inner worlds, and the suggestions for how to navigate the space between another person's words and actions and the letter writer's own needs and assumptions. Later on, I used Ask a Manager to help navigate my entry into the world of resumes and workplace relationships. The compilation of her work, Ask a Manager by Alison Green, provides a ton of advice relevant to embarking on a career, and I've given it as a graduation gift to others.
My love for advice continues, though now my interest is captured by a sharp insight and a fascinating turn of phrase more than a dramatic letter. If I sound particularly wise while giving interpersonal advice, I'm usually a breath away from citing a professional giver of advice.
Other WRAL Top Stories
Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer
While this is not technically an advice book, the advice columnist John Paul Brammer (aka Hola Papi) has framed his memoir as advice column answers. Brammer's columns have a vulnerable and compassionate bent, honest about the limits of advice. Telling his life story as an answer to his own questions about identity, love, community, and mental health was a natural fit.
In the chapter 'How do I overcome my imposter syndrome to live my life as an authentic Latino?' he describes taking a job in his town's lone Mexican restaurant in order to feel more connection to authentic Mexicans, having grown up in an English-speaking house with a white parent but with classmates who mocked his Mexican heritage. He eventually offers this insight to his younger self, "The answer is: I'm no one at all, except for my experiences. I am the things I've seen and the things I've felt. I am the people I've met. Those things are authentic. You can't lie your way in or out of them like you can lie your way into a college, like you can lie to your white friends about whether or not the Mexican restaurant you're eating at is 'real,' just to feel a temporary surge in authority, in authenticity."
Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles and Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times from Ask Baba Yaga by Taisia Kitaiskaia
Baba Yaga, the supernatural crone living in the wilds of Russia, has been known to dole out solid advice wrapped in a cocoon of witchy-woodsy imagery, in a typewriter font with eccentric (perhaps esoteric) punctuation. Digging deep into yourself for the answer is more palatable when provided a beautiful metaphor to begin the excavation.
In response to a letter summarized in Poetic Remedies as "What if I never find love again?" Baba Yaga replied to a letter writer who feared losing their spark, "You do not need to wrap yrself around a spark , you need only to lie open, your back in the dark water. & Everything has its fear--the leaves & stumps, the nails in the wood, the eye of the fish. :You are never alone in the mystery : you can Be love itself , a candle in the belly of the ghost."
tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
When I first read Dear Sugar columns, I had no idea who the name was behind the pseudonym. That Sugar would reveal herself to be powerhouse author Cheryl Strayed feels obvious in retrospect, but from the start she provided a loving, wise voice writing from a place of survival beyond current hardships.
In the chapter 'A Big Life' which starts from a question about student loan debts turning from a financial struggle into a point of intergenerational tension, Strayed delves into her own struggles to pay for college: the lack of support, the jobs she worked, and the huge lifespan of the loans she took. But she treats her struggles as opportunity and lessons, not losses, and gently encourages the asker to do the same. "So here's the long and short of it, Wearing Thin: There is no why. You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding. And, dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand."