Well, 2023 is still “new” to me, so Happy New Year, y’all!! This post has been sitting in my brain’s waiting room for a while, as I work through all the to-do’s in line ahead of it. I’m still not done with the to-do’s and never will be. And that will just have to be alright. Working nonstop is a scam, not to mention a prescription for depression and all sorts of disasters. Some things are just gon’ have to wait while I stop and live a little bit. My first live-a-little-bit goal this year is to get back on track with me-time reading. Here are some books I want to get into:
Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. by Noor Hindi (published by Haymarket Books, 2022)
I heard this woman recite her poems last week and could not get enough of her. I love the way she slices through the ignorant mess that people say and think about Palestinians and Palestinian Americans while putting her own queer womanhood front and center.
Little Rodney the Librarian, by Rodney Freeman (published by Preservation, LLC, 2022)
Written by none other than The Black Male Archives founder Rodney Freeman, this kid’s tale features a young bibliophile in a high-stakes fight against book-eating bugs. I’ll relish it first, then tell myself I bought it for a child in my family.
The Black Seventies, edited by Floyd B. Barbour (published by Porter Sargent, 1970)
This book of essays by Black intellectuals includes psychiatrist Chester Pierce’s “Offensive Mechanisms,” in which he coined the now famous term “microaggression.”
The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (published by Berkeley Books, 2021)
People keep telling me how good this book is, and it’s about a librarian, so why have I not read it? Probably because I know this fictionalized portrayal of J. P. Morgan’s real-life African American librarian doing extraordinary work while passing for white is probably going to rile me up. I won’t let that keep me from this story, though. The librarian, Bella da Costa Greene, worked too hard for it.
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else), by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (published by Pluto Press, 2022)
After hearing philosopher-author Táíwò being interviewed on a TV program the other night, I immediately added this book to my list. The title alone is an amen-evoking statement that made me want to get up to speed on Táíwò’s thinking. I can’t wait to read his critique of the co-opting of the term “identity politics” from its roots in the Combahee River Collective.
Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin (published by Polity Press, 2019)
Perhaps it’s that data has been on my mind a lot lately. Or perhaps it’s the memory of that jaw-dropping lecture I heard Benjamin deliver a year or two ago. Whatever the reason, I just know I want to read everything this woman has ever written. This book, in which Benjamin writes about the “New Jim Code” and how technology facilitates racism, seems like an excellent starting point.
Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood, by James Baldwin
It’s James Baldwin’s only children’s book. I heard about it four years ago and have been wanting to read it ever since. What better time than now, when I’m living in the city where the book takes place?
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson (published by Random House, 2020)
This is a leading title on the list of Books I Should Have Read by Now. Wilkerson’s brilliant first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, left me speechless, and I’m fairly sure Caste will do the same.
Stacy Torian 