We’re halfway through the year??! As per usual, I shall ignore the existential dread by sticking my head in a book. I read 10 books this month (the most books I’ve read in one month so far this year!), bringing my total books read this year to 39, which means I’m exactly 75% through my 2020 Goodreads reading goal of 52 books, so I have that going for me.
I found my groove halfway through the month and I’m excited to keep rolling. I read my first Agatha Christie novel ever and am reading my second one right now; there’s an ARC I need to get to ASAP; after that I’m going for Exhalation by Ted Chiang and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. So there’s my preliminary July TBR!
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“What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?” by Lauren Michele Jackson via Vulture:
For such a list to do good, something keener than “anti-racism” must be sought. The word and its nominal equivalent, “anti-racist,” suggests something of a vanity project, where the goal is no longer to learn more about race, power, and capital, but to spring closer to the enlightened order of the antiracist.
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi
★★★★ // Goodreads
I grew up on this same failed strategy more than one hundred fifty years later. Generations of Black bodies have been raised by the judges of “uplift suasion.” The judges strap the entire Black race on the Black body’s back, shove the burdened Black body into White spaces, order the burdened Black body to always act in an upstanding manner to persuade away White racism, and punish poor Black conduct with sentences of shame for reinforcing racism, for bringing the race down. I felt the burden my whole Black life to be perfect before both White people and the Black people judging whether I am representing the race well. The judges never let me just be, be myself, be my imperfect self.
Well isn’t this book a hilarious transition from that article excerpt? Despite how the title of this book seems to exactly counter that excerpt, I think the content of this book succeeds in focusing on education over the warm-fuzzy goals of self-help or creating empathy. It provides a framework for thinking, with an express focus on definitions, and also weaves in history and personal anecdotes. At times the wordy definitions can feel repetitive and almost read like a math textbook, but the precision is essential to establishing a foundational understanding, especially when there are so many misconceptions (ahem, or purposeful obfuscations to distract us from the good fight).
Kendi always makes sure to bring attention back to policy, policy, policy. Being antiracist isn’t about being nice to everyone and not being an asshole. It’s about policies that lead to racial equity. Another major concept in the book is distinguishing antiracist ideas from assimilationist and segregationist ideas (the distinction between antiracist and assimilationist ideas gave me a lot to self-reflect on, in particular).
Table of contents: Definitions (racism/antiracism, racist/antiracist policies, racial inequality/equality, racist/antiracist ideas), Dueling Consciousness (segregationist, assimilationist, antiracist), Power, Biology, Ethnicity, Body, Culture, Behavior, Color, White, Black, Class, Space, Gender, Sexuality, Failure, Success, Survival (cancer as an analogy for racism).
Main ideas:
- “‘Racist’ is not…a pejorative… It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction.”
- “The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what—not who—we are.”
- “‘Racist policy’ says exactly what the problem is and where the problem is. ‘Institutional racism’ and ‘structural racism’ and ‘systemic racism’ are redundant. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.”
- “The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self-interest.”
- “A racist power creates racist policies out of raw self-interest; the racist policies necessitate racist ideas to justify them.”
- “This is the consistent function of racist ideas—and of any kind of bigotry more broadly: to manipulate us into seeing people as the problem, instead of the policies that ensnare them.”
Example of segregationist vs. assimilationist vs. antiracist:
- “Segregationists who consider Black neighborhoods to be war zones have called for tough policing and the mass incarceration of super-predators. Assimilationists say these super-predators need tough laws and tough love from mentors and fathers to civilize them back to nonviolence. Antiracists say Black people, like all people, need more higher-paying jobs within their reach, especially Black youngsters, who have consistently had the highest rates of unemployment of any demographic group, topping 50 percent in the mid-1990s.”
More thoughts:
- “I do not use ‘microaggression‘ anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—’micro’ and ‘aggression.’ A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor.”
- “Do-nothing climate policy is racist policy, since the predominately non-White global south is being victimized by climate change more than the Whiter global north, even as the Whiter global north is contributing more to its acceleration.”
- “Changing minds is not a movement. Critiquing racism is not activism. Changing minds is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change.”
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
★★★★ // Goodreads
Intersectionality, the belief that our social justice movements must consider all of the intersections of identity, privilege, and oppression that people face in order to be just and effective, is the number one requirement of all the work that I do. When I first learned about intersectionality in college, I honestly had no idea what a huge part of my life it would later become. What was at first an interesting if not abstract theory I wrote about for college papers became a matter of my political, social, spiritual, and yes, even physical survival. Because I am not capable of cutting myself to pieces.
This book focuses a bit more on self-help than education. It also notes how racism is born out of self-interest over hate, that it is combatted systemically rather than with neighbourly friendliness, but it doesn’t hit it home quite as hard as How to Be an Antiracist does. (This topic is mostly constrained to the second chapter of this book—”What is racism?” The penultimate paragraph includes a helpful rapid fire of concrete examples tying racism to its systemic causes and effects.)
So You Want to Talk About Race reads more like a memoir + exercise book. Each chapter focuses on a common conversational topic (see table of contents), and some also feature easy-to-read lists for reference that suggest ways to check yourself and how to approach specific cases in conversation. The nature of the topic of everyday conversation brings more attention to basic humanity and open-mindedness than policy and history, and although the conversational solutions don’t always get to the heart of the problem, there’s still some value there. The most insightful topics for me were on intersectionality (ch5 – “What is intersectionality and why do we need it?”), model minorities (ch14 – “What is the model minority myth?”), and tone policing (ch15 – “But what if I hate Al Sharpton?”).
People have a lot of opinions about antiracist reading lists, and while I wouldn’t push this book as essential reading, I don’t think it hurts to find ways to make conversations about race less daunting for those of us privileged enough to never have been forced to have the conversation before, so that—paraphrasing from the book—we can eventually make change at the intersection of our privilege and somebody else’s oppression. We all have to start somewhere.
Table of contents: Is it really about race? What is racism? What if I talk about race wrong? Why am I always being told to “check my privilege?” What is intersectionality and why do I need it? Is police brutality really about race? How can I talk about affirmative action? What is the school-to-prison pipeline? Why can’t I say the “N” word? What is cultural appropriation? Why can’t I touch your hair? What are microaggressions? Why are our students so angry? What is the model minority myth? But what if I hate Al Sharpton? I just got called a racist, what do I do now? Talking is great, but what else can I do?
Dear Evan Hansen by Steven Levenson
★★★★★ // Goodreads
You fell out of a tree? What are you, like, an acorn?
Evan is a nobody at school but is suddenly thrust into the spotlight when he’s mistaken to be the best friend of a recently passed classmate.
This is a coming-of-age story dealing with mental health, anxiety, depression, suicide, grief. It’s about facing the mess of yourself. It’s about being a part of something.
Initially, I had simply bought this script as a cheap souvenir ($1.49 at a thrift store!) and not as actual reading material, but I’m so happy I revisited this one. It’s one of my favourite Broadway musicals ever, but I forgot just how much I loved it until I gave the script a reread. I remembered that the show made me cry, but I forgot how funny the dialogue was. The script included all the lyrics too, and you better believe I sang all of them in my head as I read. Had another cry for good measure.
PS: I’ve read the novelisation of this musical as well and I wouldn’t recommend it. Would definitely recommend this script though, especially if you don’t think you’ll get to see the musical in person. And I’ll just assume you’ve already listened to the soundtrack because if you haven’t yet, what are you doing??
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
★★★★ // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Macey
I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further—for time is the longest distance between places.
(This shitty photo is why I don’t take photos of my Kindle for bookstagram hahah. It’s so bad that it’s kind of funny, which is why I have graced my blog with its presence. But actually, can ebooks get responsive covers, pls?)
A memory play. Tom recalls his time at home with his mother and sister. His mother is stuck reliving the former glory of her youth. His shy sister finds comfort in her collection of glass figures. Tom longs to leave home and his job at a warehouse for a life of poetry and adventure.
I read this little play in school, forgot most of it over the years, and so decided to give it a quick reread. I remember that one of my friends used this play for every SAT essay prompt, which was amazing.
It’s not the plot but the characters that leave a lasting impression. Plot-wise, this is simply a matchmaking story. But the characters left me with a lot to contemplate existentially, about not being where you want to be in life, about escaping reality, about living in the past, dreaming of the future, solitude.
Passing by Nella Larsen
★★★★ // Goodreads
Well, then, what does it matter? One risk more or less, if we’re not safe anyway, if even you’re not, it can’t make all the difference in the world.
This novella follows two light-skinned mixed-race women in 1920s New York. Clare is married to a racist white man and keeps her mixed identity a secret from him. Irene is married to a dark-skinned black man. They have a mutual friend Gertrude who is also passing and is married to a white man who knows her mixed identity.
I have a growing appreciation for novellas. With so few words to spare, every moment is engaging. Throughout this story there’s an underlying tension. It’s a brilliant psychological portrait that explores so many themes and dynamics. Obviously it explores race, but it also explores class, sexuality, friendship, jealousy, security. This novella is so short that I don’t want to say anything else about it except to recommend it, not simply as an informative read, but as a masterful work of literature.
A book that’s been getting a lot of buzz lately that explores similar themes is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. I plan to get around to that one in the next few months, but for now I’m glad to have dipped into the topic with this novella a third of the size. (Still dying to read The Vanishing Half though. I think I’m just not looking forward to reading it on my Kindle. Man I’d really love to read this one from a physical library copy.)
Timeline by Michael Crichton
★★★★ // Goodreads
In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.
A group of history students travel back in time to medieval France to rescue their professor.
One of my friends who doesn’t usually read said they liked Michael Crichton and particularly enjoyed Timeline, so I wanted to give it a read. Plus, I hadn’t read commercial fiction for awhile so I thought it’d be a nice reprieve from my current repertoire.
This story was an exciting adventure, fun and fast-paced. The end was tidy and I could have done without Crichton pointing out every female character as attractive, but for light entertainment, I didn’t mind. Enjoyed the action, suspense, secrecy, and twists.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
★★★★ // Goodreads
It’s extraordinarily intriguing, the whole thing. Every new development that arises is like the shake you give to a kaleidoscope—the thing changes entirely in aspect.
In a peaceful English village, a woman commits suicide, and not 24 hours later, her fiance is murdered.
My first Agatha Christie! I had no idea what to expect, not knowing anything about Agatha Christie or her work except for her fame. I think that’s the best way to go into a mystery novel anyway.
I don’t want to let you know what to expect regarding the mystery, so I’m just here to pass on the recommendation. I did some research to see where to start with Agatha Christie, and although this isn’t the most popular title (I actually never heard of it until I did my research), it seemed like the most acclaimed title. The book kept me guessing until the very end and I still didn’t get it right. I loved the characters. They brought great personality and humour. I can see why everyone loves Agatha Christie so much, and I’ll definitely be reading more. (Currently reading The Murder on the Orient Express. Might get to And Then There Were None in July as well.)
Burden of Ashes by Justin Chin
★★★.5 // Goodreads
And in the end, in the dustbin of my history, when all is decaying and rotted, composting to bits, whether my work survives after me, or even survives the next few years, will remain to be seen. What I know is what this work did: It gave me the courage to speak, and to find some semblance of myself worth the words.
Memoir/essays of queer Asian American poet and performance artist Justin Chin. He writes about his childhood in Malaysia and Singapore, about home, lovers, sexuality.
My favourite essays were the ones that explored cultural identity. The ones that explored sexual identity felt quite violent and graphic, almost masochistic. It’s the way he experienced it, so it’s not good or bad, just how it is. It was an intense book, even the parts about his childhood. It felt very On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous-esque, but Chin’s writing is a bit more accessible than Vuong’s.
Backstory of how I came upon this title: I randomly learned about it last month whilst browsing APAHM reading lists and was intrigued to read more Asian American queer lit. There are few reviews, but the few there are glowing.
I learned that Chin passed away in 2015 from a stroke related to complications of AIDS. That fact plus the fact that I couldn’t seem to find the book anywhere (i.e. library, online) created a sense of scarcity that made me more desperate to get my hands on the book. I eventually found a secondhand copy off AbeBooks for $4 + $4 shipping and it arrived from the UK in early June.
After tracking down a copy with such difficulty, I was intrigued by the publication history. It’s published by Alyson Books, a publishing house specialising in LGBT fiction and nonfiction. According to Wikipedia, they switched to digital publishing only in 2010, though apparently their website has returned a DNS resolution error message since 2019, so idk if this publishing house even exists anymore.
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
★★★.5 // Goodreads
Bah. I just want to work. Money is better than men. I want a Hermès handbag.
A successful career woman with high-functioning autism hires an escort to teach her about sex and relationships.
I love a light romance to breeze through in an evening. I don’t need an honourable character, a complicated character, or a complicated plot, just simple entertainment. But The Kiss Quotient was slightly too insta-love for me when the plot points could have been so easily explained for a more probable progression. That’s forgivable though. Most contemporary romances are very insta-love. My main gripe was the weird power dynamics and the possessive male trope. Not a fan. This is another common thing in many contemporary romances that I’m often able to gloss past, but it didn’t work for me here and felt uncomfortable.
When I was able to overlook those two points, I had fun reading it. I liked the representation of someone on the autism spectrum, Asian Americans, and a male escort rather than female. (I found Hoang’s note at the end about her own experience with autism much more interesting and insightful than how autism was depicted in the book, but the book is mainly a smutty romance and not a literary fiction masterpiece so that’s fine.)
The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths
★★★.5 // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Sadia
Write every day, that’s what I tell my students. Don’t wait for inspiration, that might not come until the end. The muse always finds you working. Look into your heart and write.
A high school English teacher’s life begins to mirror a Gothic murder mystery when her colleague is found dead.
I found this mystery a bit slow and melodramatic. The developments in the mystery were interesting and creepy, but I wish there was more suspense to propel the mystery in between those moments. More dynamic characters would have kept me better invested as well. I didn’t guess the end, but it didn’t feel as satisfying as it could have been because there wasn’t a lot to go on.
If you’re looking for a seasonal read, this is a solid option for October, particularly if you’re into atmospheric reads, dark academia, and Gothic literature. (I’m not typically into atmospheric reads or Gothic literature. Dark academia is to be determined.)
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
DNF-14% // Goodreads
The hidden story of the black female mathematicians behind WWII and the Space Race.
I was super hyped to read this book ever since watching the film adaptation in 2017, and after reading an astronaut’s memoir last month, which turned out to be my favourite read of the year so far, I decided it was finally time to get around to Hidden Figures. I had really high expectations for the book, so I was really disappointed that I couldn’t get through it. It was dry, I kept dozing off, and when I started looking up reviews on Goodreads to see if anyone else struggled with it, I figured it was time to give it up. One Goodreads reviewer said that a book with such a naturally interesting subject shouldn’t struggle so much to be interesting to read, and I was like, You know what? Excellent point.
I thought this book would focus on four figures—Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden—and follow their narratives, but this book was kind of all over the place, jumping between people and time periods, and it was really heavy on the historical context. (I also thought the book would focus on the Space Race and didn’t know it would mention anything about WWII, but I have no qualms with that, just FYI for people who are basing their expectations of the book off the film, like I did.)
The writing style wasn’t for me, and I’m not big on reading histories unless they’re narrative histories anyway, so this style really wasn’t for me, but if you’re into history, you might not mind this format. Regardless, I’m glad this book was picked up and adapted into a film so that this important story could reach a wider audience.
What was your favourite read this month?