Recent Reading - Alexis Clements

The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property by Eunsong Kim (A read with far-reaching implications. Very glad to have learned about it through this podcast episode.)
If You’re a Girl: Selected Stories 1985–2023 by Ann Rower (I found the more contemporary/recent stories to be among the most compelling.)
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (A bitterly poignant read as Israel expands its war with Palestine into other countries in the region. How often will we allow histories to repeat?)
The Tree Doctor by Marie Mutsuki Mockett (I haven’t read a lot of pandemic lit and think I’ll probably avoid the form. I see where this book is coming from, but it didn’t hit hard for me, emotionally or otherwise.)
Playboy by Constance Debré (The protagonist, who the author is clear is modeled on herself, comes off as a cliché of a certain kind of asshole.)
Molly by Blake Butler (I found this book insufferable and couldn’t finish it. The narrator comes across as just as much a problem as the person he’s claiming to portray and the writing was awful.)
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing by Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor (Read this as part of an essay about a film, will post link here when it’s published.)
Loving Corrections by adrienne maree brown (It feels like this could have used a little shaping/editing and some more time to cook. It doesn’t feel like there’s a ton here that’s new or hasn’t been said elsewhere with a bit more time and care.)
Queer Ducks (And Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer (As a student of history and philosophy of science, I love how much this book does to demonstrate the ways science actually works, for good and for ill. It’s also a great compendium on queer sex and gender variance among non-human animals, which is just a very excellent thing to read about.)
His Own Where by June Jordan (A gift from a friend. A surprise. It takes a minute to get into her particular use of language, but the world and perspective Jordan renders are well worth the adjustment.)

Canary Row by John Steinbeck (I really loved this book. It felt to me that it was about interdependence and the reluctant embrace of the chaos of other people, and that felt timely in my life.)
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown (I was as fascinated by the way this book was put together as I was by the content. This is an amalgamation in the form of a book, which isn’t new, but it felt very noteworthy to me as I read it, particularly given that there’s a single author listed on the front. My most immediate takeaway from the content to pay more attention to the places where I’m enduring something, a habit I was born and trained into.)
The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde (I wanted to enjoy this more than I did. I couldn’t stay in it, but there are some wonderful quotes and notes within worth plucking out.)
Moby Dyke by Krista Burton (Learned from a friend that this book mentions my film and so decided to give it a read. Wish it had more depth of research into the subject, beyond the author simply stopping in to the lesbian bars she was able to visit. It’s one in a always-growing list of projects I’ve kept note of that are focused on the loss of lesbian bars in particular.)
Hilary Harkness: Everything for You by Hillary Harkness (Reviewed for Hyperallergic.)
Horse by Geraldine Brooks (I loved Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven, so when I heard about this book I knew I would read it. It’s very well done and a fascinating read.)
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz (Wanted to get a literary taste of Los Angeles, in addition to experiencing it in person. I wasn’t disappointed in this book.)
Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (Reviewed for Hyperallergic.)
Loft Law: The Last of New York City’s Original Artist Lofts by Joshua Charow (Wrote about the accompanying exhibition for Hyperallergic.)
Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton (A close friend gave me this book after I was talking to her about being excited to explore the public pools of a new city.)
Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire by Jack Halberstam (This book felt scattered and meandering in many moments, but I was grateful that it pointed me to many other people’s writing as a source of insight on the topic.)
The Library Book by Susan Orlean (It would have been nearly impossible for me not to like this book, but the fact that Orlean is such a compelling writer, who made it about so much more than a fire, guaranteed it would be a page-turner for me.)
Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore (The first book a client of mine wrote. From the outside you might think it’s going to be something different than what it is, but ultimately the book direct challenges white saviorism, and resists allowing a romance to derail that mission.)
Shooting To Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies that Matter by Christine Vachon (Recommended by a client who was asked to start teaching producing after making his first narrative feature, and who was grateful this textbook was already in place in the curriculum. Very much of its time, but also I see why it’s still used as a text in a class focused on the practicalities of producing.)
Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (This book didn’t hit me as strongly as The Freezer Door, but I am glad to get to know more of Mattilda’s writing. One point that has stuck for me in this book is the point about refuses to assimilate the positive and negative behaviors of a person, to insist on both—that feels particularly relevant to me in this moment.)
Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Queer Histories by Diarmuid Hester (Published review in Hyperallergic, the book doesn’t do what it set out to do, but that wasn’t necessarily bad.)
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein (Where to even begin—this book covers so much ground. It made so much sense that in the end she brings in people like Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Mariame Kaba, because it is ultimately so much about asking about how we move across our shadow worlds and selves in an effort to both organize and care for each other’s humanity rather than discard and dismiss one another. Definitely a book I’ll be referring back to in the future.)
The Freezer Door by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (This book came to me at just the time when I needed it. The questions about place, the seeming limits to contemporary intimacy and contact, isolation, and queer space/community all resonated for me.)
My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (There is so much raw exposition in this book, that it made me wonder to what degree that was driven by the currency attached to intimate revelation of difficulty rather than the author’s perspective on what happened.)
On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson (It’s interesting that I picked this up at roughly the same time I picked up Lauren Berlant’s On the Inconvenience of Other People. Something about grappling with notions of sovereignty is really resonating at the moment.)
Friendship as Social Justice Activism: Critical Solidarities in a Global Perspective edited by Debanuj DasGupta, Jaime M. Grant, Niharika Banerjea, Rohit K. Dasgupta (A very mixed bag of writing, but I appreciated the resources it pointed me to and some of the more personal stories sung out. I was a bit sad, though it should have been expected with an academic publication, that so many of the friendships described were formed or existed within academic institutions – I always hope for a life of the mind outside of academia.)
A World Between by Emily Hashimoto (The delivery of this story is clear and straightforward, but almost too much so, for me anyhow.)
A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney edited by Karla Jay (While her life was notable and full of intriguing and titilating detail, I can’t say I was overly interested in her writing. Though editor Karla Jay’s introductory essay was worth reading.)
A Frog in the Fall (And Later On…) by Linnea Sterte (I can’t remember when I heard about this book, but when a new run was printed, I couldn’t resist. Well worth the time spent reading it.)
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor (As someone who has written a lot about the arts and money, who didn’t get an MFA, and who was at an artists’ residency while I read this—it really hit the spot.)
A Short History of Finland by Jonathan Clements (After learning I have a couple of distant relatives from here I was curious to get a bit better sense of Finland’s culture and history and this book makes a good, accessible entry point.)
Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range by William deBuys (As is my habit, if I’m visiting a new place whose culture I don’t feel familiar with, I like to find a good book to understand some of the complexities of the place, and this one, which I understand is very well-regarded among New Mexicans, was well worth the read.)
The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan: Sex, Syphilis, and Psychoanalysis in the Making of Modern American Culture edited by Lois Platen Rudnick (It’s nearly impossible to be in Taos for any period of time without encountering or being told about Mabel. I skimmed some of her published memoirs at the library, but this book, whose thesis about the ways in which syphilis influenced the modern era, is fascinating, as is the view into Mabel’s life. The book is really comprised primarily of writing by Rudnick, which only very selected excerpts from the memoirs, and the reading is better for it.)
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Why do so many people right about imagined hellscapes in this world when we are already so far into a real one? This was a very engaging read, and offers some pointed perspectives on how ill-fated many endeavors are, but… ooofff!)
Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir by Nicole J. Georges (I love getting graphic novels and memoirs from my local library and reading them in a day or two. This one meanders and isn’t tidy, but in that regard, the style matches the content, which felt right.)
feeling upon arrival by Saretta Morgan (Loved these brief glimpses of a growing intimacy.)
Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future by Patty Krawec (Another primer at a time when this kind of book abounds. Definitely offers some learning for those seeking it.)
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (One of the best parts of this book is her afterword, which adds complexity and nuance to everything that came before.)
Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It by Richard V. Reeves (Read this one for research, and oooffff, it’s painful how durable this behavior is, and it brings up a lot of the things I feel about how destructive the existence of pseudo-public goods like the high school I went to are given that the vast majority of kids who went there were upper middle class and above.)
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (There’s so much for someone of my age to love about this book, but for me the questions around play in general, some PC gaming nostalgia, and complicated friendships were what really made me love it.)
Ancestor Trouble by Maud Newton (My sense is this probably worked better as a blog, it was a bit too all over the place for me to feel like I got much from it, though I did come in with high expectations, which is always tough.)
A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul (Bird physiology is astounding! But after getting about a third of the way into this book it started to really drag. Wish it had focused on building a clearer and more robust narrative.)
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us by Rachel Aviv (This book covers a lot of ground, but in a way that makes it hard to pin down what it’s up to. I picked it up because I remain fascinated by the problem of what is inherent within us and what society and inequity do to us, which is one part of what this book is asking.)
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (What a ride! While my upbringing and family life was nothing like this, it does make one reflect a lot on codependency and people pleasing if that’s ever been a dynamic you’ve known or been close to.)
Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields (How to read this book and not want to re-program your brain? But then find yourself slamming up against your own brain in the process. A really provocative book that will sit with me for a bit.)
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman (I’m in a mindset these days that it is the darkest image in this book that has stuck with me. And I’m finding myself a bit frustrated with material that doesn’t at least acknowledge the possibility of non-binary existence.)
Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 by Robert M. Fogelson (Such a useful history on the genesis and character of suburbs, which covers ground much earlier than any of the history lessons I learned about suburban development in the US.)
The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class by David R. Roediger (It’s impossible, for me anyway, not to be daunted by the sheer amount of material the author must have combed through in order to parse the language he’s examining in this book in order to piece together the his analysis.)
Independent People by Halldór Laxness (While this book is so clearly illuminating a particular cultural identification with false notions of independence within Iceland specifically, as someone from the US, it’s impossible not to also relate variations on that thinking to many within the country in which I live.)
DUETS: Frederick Weston & Samuel R. Delany in Conversation (Such a lovely conversation to get to listen in on, and so endearing how Delany keeps trying to get Weston back on his track, but Weston just keeps jumping outside of Delany’s deliberate line of thought.)
Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair by Sarah Schulman (I did not find this book to be particularly useful on the topics in the title, and in some cases found it petty and destructive. It’s also remarkable how little reference it makes to the decades of work done by others on abolition, transformative justice, and community accountability, when those folks engage daily in the work of building alternative models that we so sorely need.)
Take ‘Em Down. Scattered Monuments & Queer Forgetting by Simon(e) van Saarloos (I appreciated that van Saarloos is asking big questions about commemoration, drawing on and dreaming up alternatives/counterpoints to state-sanctioned rituals and markers. It’s very timely. One small quibble is that I did leave with questions about framing the questioning of norms as a particularly queer thing to do. This is born of an increasing experience of seeing qualities and powers ascribed to queerness in general that I’m not convinced are particularly unique to or inherently embedded within queer people as a whole, particularly given that queerness is so ill-defined and includes many people who are very happy to assimilate within dominant norms. A thought here more than a complaint in this specific instance, given that this is just one of many texts that seem a bit prone to that tendency.)
Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Wanted a novel to sink into for a minute, and was intrigued by a radio interview I hear. Struggled a bit to stay with it, though there is an emotional payoff in the final chapter.)
The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry (When both bell hooks and Heather McGhee recommend a book, you read it. This did not disappoint, especially in knowing when the two parts of it were written. Much remains relevant today, even if some parts feel dated/particular.)
When Brooklyn was Queer by Hugh Ryan (This one was on my list for quite awhile, but thankfully had an excuse to pick it up and read it so I could be in conversation with Ryan about some aspects of the book.)

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee (A really excellent and approachable explanation of how racism, and racist policies impact everyone, with a particular eye on speaking to white readers about how these policies blowback negative effects for many poor, working class, and middle class whites.)
White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America by Joan C. Williams (I have some bones to pick with this book, but one thing that really stuck with me here was the fact that two-thirds of Americans don’t graduate college. The fact that this information surprised me says a lot about the worlds I occupy. Education plays such a central role in class conflict and class culture in this country. I am grateful to this book for driving that point home for me.)
The North Pole by Kathan Brown (This book may have been of its moment, back in the early 2000s, but today the only piece that really holds up is the reprinting of the diaries of Fridtjof Nansen from the Fram expedition. I picked this up on a trip to San Francisco awhile back because my curiosity about the continually warming coldest places on this planet continues.)
Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy, and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs by Colin Gordon (A meticulous explanation of the particularly extreme and confounding conglomeration of municipalities that make up St. Louis County and the fact that preservation of racial segregation and private property, along with its value, was at the core of this arrangement. Reading for research.)
The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah (More intellectual grounding in the fact that any notion of a singular or “pure” identity that has clear boundaries is ultimately a fascist project, though Appiah would certainly not put it that way. I have the Brazilian filmmaker Ana Vaz to thank for that turn of phrase.)
Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile (Every year I end up indulging in a few celebrity memoirs and this was the one for this summer. Not the worst nor the best, but was curious about this human whose music I admire and who is uplifting and challenging a musical paradigm that was part of my youth.)
Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer (A very well-drawn and structured story, and really appreciate that the authors start off with clarity that Highsmith was not a great human, but she’s so unlikeable that at some point it’s pretty hard to stick with the framing by the author of the story as a sexy romance.)
It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be by Lizzy Stewart (A moving set of short meditations on the realities of growing into adulthood and the complexities of our relationships with ourselves and our friends over that transition.)
Alice in Leatherland by Jolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli (It was a fun afternoon read, but I wish the love interest in this book was not the cliché masc asshole who earned their character development more, and I also wish there was a little more of the leather culture teased by the title.)
I Am a Woman by Ann Bannon (After reading the first in the Beebo Brinker series I was curious to read the next one. I love that the Lesbian Herstory Archives dubbed pulps survival literature for dykes. There’s certainly some things you could argue with about this book today, but for the folks who were looking for anything where the characters weren’t dead at the end, and the sex was hot, this met the need.)
Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis & Cultural Crisis by Ben Davis (While I thought after reading the first couple bits I would find some compelling insights, this book and the author seem to lose track of themselves as it progresses.)
We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown (A wonderfully clear and succinct book that knows what it’s about and offers not only some really useful insights but also demonstrates some of its key points by showing the author herself learning in public.)
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (A form of essay that I love: interweaving observations and notes about the natural world with lessons and observations from the writer’s human existence. Feels like it’s in the vain of one of my favorites of this form: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss.)
The Delaware Finns by E. A. Louhi (Read this one for research purposes. It’s dry and the author is a very unreliable narrator, but it’s an interesting footnote in colonial American history in terms of a small ethnic group being used by others, while also resisting certain common narratives, until they eventually assimilate. The author is at his clearest when lifting full passages from the church and court transcripts that he used as his primary sources. Unfortunately he reveals none of their names or locations…)
Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy (It’s hard to be mad at a book that includes this sentence and doesn’t feel the need to get defensive or overly wordy about it: “At its core, burnout is a symptom of capitalism.”)
Old In Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Irvin Painter (After reading The History of White People, I’ve been very curious to read other works by Painter, and this one does not disappoint.)
Black Genealogy by Charles L. Blockson (Though it was originally published in 1977, it still represents a pretty fascinating dive into the realities tracing Black American family histories.)
The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham (It was not intentional to be reading this book in tandem with hooks’ collection of essays noted below, but they ended up being a great pairing, covering so much related ground.)
Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks (A meandering and rich collection of essays that covers so many topics: rootedness; black aesthetics, with quilting top of mind; healing Black Americans relationship with place through nature; and on and on. Some real gems in here.)
Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght (A compelling story about what it means to study and conserve a lesser-known species. Also a testament to just how crucial local knowledge and hospitality is to the success of such a project, even when the money and writing is from someone not native to the area.)
Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke (A novel take on a common subject these days. It avoids stigmatizing, and instead wants to focus on the sociological and psychological origins and impacts.)
Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class by Catherine Liu (This book is hyper-focused on trying to make the case for working class solidarity by cutting the power of the professional managerial class off at the knees. And I support the point and she’s got some great arguments, but some of them also go a bit astray in service of her primary goal. This was also the second book in close succession to take down To Kill a Mockingbird, this time positioning it as anti-communist propaganda, which was super insightful. Rankine also takes it to task for its corrupt race politics in Just Us, noted below.)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg (Re-read with a friend. While a lot of it holds up and was fun to read again, it’s pretty impossible as an adult not to be aware of all the different class and race dynamics at play in the book.)
Just Us by Claudia Rankine (Read because I wanted to revisit Rankine’s work and also as part of an essay about this book and her play Help. Love this continuation of her annotated and illustrated essay work, it’s a very successful work that burrows into its subject.)
The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window by Lorraine Hansberry (As a longtime admirer of Hansberry this had been on my list for awhile and finally found a copy. Glad to know another part of her body of work.)
The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han (There’s a way in which the tone, though Han notes upfront that he wants to avoid nostalgia, feels nostalgic in many moments, or at least comparative of a hypothetical and abstracted past vs. the present. There a many sentiments that resonate, but it felt like it could use some specificity rather than purely speaking in generalities.)
All About Love by bell hooks (This is a classic for a reason. And the only workable definition of love I’ve read up to this point.)
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb (I think I came to this by way of Brené Brown’s podcast, but as someone who has been in therapy on and off for awhile now, I found this book to be very insightful in terms of the process and utility of therapy.)
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (Dipped in to this young adult book to enjoy some historic lesbian fiction. Definitely an enjoyable read once you get into it.)
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (For research and because hearing him speak more than a few times now, I was very curious to read the book.)
Beebo Brinker by Ann Bannon (Thank goodness Bannon was writing without the intense fear of the censors because it’s so wonderful to read a vintage lesbian tale where the protagonist is affirmed by her friends and is free to engage in all kinds of hijinks.)
The Wanting Was a Wilderness: Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and the Art of Memoir by Alden Jones (A really incisive read for anyone interested in memoir as a form, and the ways in which queer folks, particularly women in my experience, make use of biography as a way of exploring their own legibility.)
The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson (Read this for research. It’s a sweeping and very well-rendered history that taught me quite a lot and I’ll no doubt be returning to it often in the future.)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (It’s clear why this book has drawn so much attention, and also clear why James Baldwin is mentioned so often as a root for this book in reviews of it.)
Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West by Peter H. Hassrick and American Wilderness: The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting by Barbara Babcock Millhouse (Reading both of these for an essay I’m working on that jumps off from Bierstadt’s work. His images were part of my American imagination since I first saw them at the National Gallery of Art as a child.)
Queer Formalism: The Return by William J. Simmons (Very glad to have had my attention drawn to this slim volume by way of Clarity Haynes.)
Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett (Came to this via a podcast. While the moments where Brackett resorts to capitalist explanations to explain the importance of being able to access their own emotions and empathize with others was tedious, the main thrust of the book felt extremely relevant.)
Life After the Revolution: Kate Millett’s Art Colony for Women by Anna Conlan (An excellent document about not only the farm that Millett and its many residents created over decades, but also of Millett’s artistic work, separate from her writing.)
A Feeling Called Heaven by Joey Yearous-Algozin (Is it humorous or sincere? In a way it feels so pointed that it doesn’t even matter, but it feels like both at the same time, which isn’t easy to pull off.)
What Does it Mean to be White? Developing White Racial Literacy by Robin DiAngelo (More research material. This one was useful for its definitions of terms, I found—i.e. distinguishing prejudice from discrimination, racism from oppression, etc. It’s very focused on the mechanics of white reactions to discussions of racism.)
The Little Book of Racial Healing: Coming to the Table for Truth-Telling, Liberation, and Transformation by Thomas Norman DeWolf and Jodie Geddes (I came to this book after watching the related film Traces of the Trade. Both are part of research for a larger project.)

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (A question that frames much of the book: “What would ‘back to the land’ mean if we understood the land to be where we are right now?”)
Our Daily Lives Have to Be a Satisfaction in Themselves: 40 Years of Bloodroot by Selma Miriam and Noel Furie (A small conpendium and introduction to a place that has held fast. And also a glimpse of a place that is very much a product of its time and the thinking of that time.)
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (An extremely well-observed book that lives up to the hype.)
Alaska: An American Colony, Second Edition by Stephen W. Haycox (A fascinating history of a state that is full of contradictions, as well as a window into the ongoing colonization of the Americas.)
NO PLAY by Ife Olujobi (A fascinating window into the ways artists grapple with the various forms of work they do in their lives, with the addition of a social justice and racial equity lens.)
A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers by Jen Jack Gieseking (What’s particularly interesting in this book is that Gieseking takes an idea that has been touched on in various ways by a number of writers and scholars, about queer space being ephemeral and based in the body, and goes and does a shit ton of research to see what non-theorists and writers think about their experiences. For that alone, it’s an achievement.)
An Apprenticeship of the Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector, translated by Stefan Tobler (It’s interesting, I read in a couple of places that this book is considered sexist by a number of people. Certainly I can see the perception, but the book is grappling with precisely that, the question of desire and being desired from someone who is subject to misogyny and living within it. That doesn’t mean they can’t have internalized it and reify it, but it’s so much more interesting for it’s ability to pinpoint what that grappling can feel like.)
Ideas Arrangements Effects Systems Design and Social Justice by The Design Studio for Social Intervention (I can’t remember why I printed this out, but while cleaning out my office I came across it and decided to give it a read. There are ideas that are embedded in this book that overlap in my mind with some of the questions raised by the work and writing of Phil Zimbardo, of Stanford Prison Experiment fame, which makes me want to re-read Zimbardo…)
The Pure and the Impure by Colette (An indulgent glimpse into a life and mind of a writer who shaped my queer erotic ideas early on.)
When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories by Bernestine Singley (A decent number of these essays remain resonant in the present.)
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber (Seemed like appropriate reading as I wrap up my first season as a tax advisor.)
The Corner that Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner (Quite possibly the perfect book to read as the pandemic winter ends and the second pandemic spring blooms.)
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome (A favorite from a friend’s childhood, which I received as a gift. A time capsule in so many ways.)
An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalanksy (A gift to myself I enjoyed some sections, but got frustrated with the voice a few chapters in. Wished I could have connected to it more.)
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo (Though it was on my list before, I ended up picking this book up and reading it just after the Jan. 6, 2020 riots on Capitol Hill. It’s hard to think of a clearer vindication of Oluo’s arguments than that.)
In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl (Many moons ago I had hoped to see this play and didn’t make it. Now I finally had the chance to read it. My first close encounter with theater in many moons since the pandemic started.)
English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson (It was in Nell Irvin Painter’s book that I learned about Emerson’s deep racism. For research for a project I needed to pick up this book to confirm it. There’s much to say about it, but I have to thank Painter for making this part of Emerson apparent to me.)
The Pencil Perfect: The Untold Story of a Cultural Icon by Caroline Weaver (A very welcome gift as I have developed a bit of a pencil habit in the past couple of years.)
Postcolonial Love Poem: Poems by Natalie Diaz (Naming this book here I’m sad to realize all the times that I’ve had a book of poetry laying in my pile for awhile, something I read now and again, dip in and out of, and then don’t mention here on this list. This one is certainly worth naming, but they all are…)
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir by Jenn Shapland (As someone who volunteers as an archive and is a lesbian, it would be impossible for me not to find this book incredibly engaging.)
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker (Because I remain fascinated by questions surrounding our notions of community, though I was sad to find that this book was less what the title promised and more advice on how to host an event.)
The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey and Michaela Angela Davis (This book is one of the better celebrity autobiographies that I’ve read lately. Well worth the indulgence.)
Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism by Trinh T. Minh-ha (Introduced to this text thanks to a short survey course on documentary theory that I took. Love classes outside of university contexts! It was taught by Reiko Tahara.)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (One of those canonical American texts that I should have read in school but was never assigned. A lot strikes me in this book, but particularly what a generous guide Walker is throughout.)
Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy by Edward Ball (Read for research and because I was interested in how this story would be told. Explores a lot of history that I hadn’t heard before.)
Migration: Exploring the Remarkable Journeys of Birds by Melissa Mayntz (The fall migration is properly underway at this point and I never tire of learning more about birds.)
Berlin by Jason Lutes (Recommended by a friend. Have to admit that I got lost in the narrative multiple times, was hard to follow, though I did carry on to the end because I was interested in the protagonist.)
Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man’s Tour of Duty Inside the IRS by Richard Yancey (Given to me by a friend when I was thinking about taxes a lot. Turns out it’s unintentionally an exploration of the horrors of humanity wrought by bureaucracy and employment under capitalism.)
Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit (Admittedly not my favorite book of hers, but was a good diversion while on vacation.)
The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter (Love her dry wit and in awe of the scope and depth of her research. Also fascinated by the ways this history reveals the truly sloppy, slipshod, and unimpressive history of Western ideas in a way nothing I’ve read before has. So glad to have encountered this book.)
Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition by The Debt Collective (As someone who has been carrying debt my entire adult life, was eager to read this, particularly in the midst of the pandemic. You can read the review on Hyperallergic.)
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class by Barbara Ehrenreich (Was eager to read this history in the midst of the pandemic to better understand my own class position and its consequences for me and others.)
The Street by Ann Petry (A masterful book. Petry’s ability to capture internalized oppressions and its impact on mental states by switching the interior monologues throughout the book is unlike anything I’ve read before.)
Pigeon Mothers by Marty Correia (Was excited to read this first novel by a good friend.)
The World is Round by Gertrude Stein (A book that Margaret Wise Brown worked hard to bring into the world. Certainly not successful as a children’s book, but it begs the question of how to touch on the unpleasant, quotidian, and inexplicable aspects of life in children’s literature, a question that I think never stops being asked.)
No Regrets: Three Discussions, edited by Dayna Tortorici (I got this solely because Astra Taylor is included and read pretty much the whole thing while taking a bath. A perfect bath read, and a glimpse into the complexities of intellectual ambitions and development as experienced by those involved.)
A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston by Robyn Crawford (A book I have been wanting to read since I learned that it came out. Very glad I got a copy. A fascinating window into what was clearly an incredibly fraught relationship and life.)
Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel (This book came to me by way of my mother when she was downsizing for another move a couple years ago. Very much of its time, I really enjoyed reading a book that my mother chose to purchase and hold onto for so long.)
The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein (It was reading the previous book – Margaret Wise Brown’s biography – that made me pick this up. I read a very abridged version, but I absolutely loved much of what I read there. That repeating. It is key.)
In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary (A friend made this book’s existence known to me, along with the fact that the subject was queer and the writer of an incredible number of children’s books. From there it was just a matter of time before I was going to pick it up!)
How Places Make Us: Novel LBQ Identities in Four Small Cities by Japonica Brown-Saracino (For anyone interested in interrogating the ways we in the US construct, describe, and adapt the labels and ideas we use to identify ourselves, this is an amazing book.)
Females by Andrea Long Chu (Bought this as soon as I saw it in the bookstore a couple months ago, but hadn’t had the chance to read it yet. Read it in a single go. Looking forward to going back and rereading a few chunks of particular interest.)
The Underground Railroad: A Selection of Authentic Narratives (Abridged) by William Still (Beyond the gripping narratives including, I found myself, with each page turning, more and more intrigued by the author himself, William Still, and his incredible effort and dedication to amassing these stories and the evidence to support them. Not to mention his wife, whom just about every correspondent mentions, and I don’t think merely out of politeness. )
Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown by Lauren Hilgers (Got a copy of this awhile back. It’s a fascinating and wrenching look at the experience of an immigrant to the US, but it did leave me with questions about the authorship of the book and how its revelations impact the communities it depicts.)
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (I had long been meaning to read one of Toews’ books. Loved this rendering of the sibling bond, and so much more.)
Impossible Owls: Essays by Brian Phillips (This was recommended to me particularly for the Alaska essay that leads the book, as I’ll be traveling there soon. Enjoyed a couple of the others in the book as well.)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (So glad I picked this up. Vuong’s observations and wayfinding through dark realities are so strong and beautifully crafted.)
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano (Reading this not so long after An Indigenous People’s History fo the United States offers a kind of history of the Americas that I was vaguely aware of, but never came this close to seeing before.)
Spit and Passion by Cristy C. Road (Love her illustrations and love this story.)
Martina by Martina Navratilova with George Vecsey (A fun read while on a trip. Needed something to gobble up. And I do occasionally love a sports memoir, particularly tennis.)

How We Got Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (An incredible resource and excellent reflection on both history and the present. Grateful to have it on my bookshelf to refer back to.)
Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker (I now finally have a sense of why people are so into her writing. This is my first time reading her work.)
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob (Such a great read, and such an excellent way to explore nonsensical realities of race dynamics in the US – through the eyes of a child.)
How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance by L. A. Kauffman (A wonderful and highly accessible look at the development and evolution of mass protests in the US. I suspect there are few who won’t learn at least a few things from reading it.)
Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography by Julia Van Haaften (While the subject is interesting, unfortunately this biography was tough to read given the density of research and references throughout. I am glad though to know more about Abbott.)
Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson (“But if the folk whose story is told don’t have the opportunity to tell their own story, what is on the surface a good think becomes a matter of who has the power and privilege to spin narratives.”)
Butch Heroes by Ria Brodell (I was excited to have a quick and accessible way to learn more about Debs, and found the texts between the graphic sections and a couple of the graphic sections to be compelling, a couple of the key graphic sections were a bit muddy and hard to follow. Wish they had paid attention to building a more coherent narrative as I think the book would have been better for it.)
Eugene V. Debs: A Graphic Biography by Noah Van Sciver, Paul Buhle, Steve Max, and Dave Nance (I was excited to have a quick and accessible way to learn more about Debs, and found the texts between the graphic sections and a couple of the graphic sections to be compelling, a couple of the key graphic sections were a bit muddy and hard to follow. Wish they had paid attention to building a more coherent narrative as I think the book would have been better for it.)
Alay-Oop by William Gropper (Learned about this from a review by arts critic Jillian Steinhauer and it truly is a fantastic early graphic novel, that gives the woman at its center quite a bit of agency as well, which is exciting to see for a book of its time.)
The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Ned Asta with illustrations by Ned Asta (Having recently learned about queer community Lavender Hill, I was glad to read this book, which grew out of that community.)
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion by Jia Tolentino (Was hooked from the intro’s discussion of making sense of the world through writing until the last word.)
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector (An important book for someone close to me, so one I wanted to read.)
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (An eye-opening litany of genocide and horrors that far outstrips any earlier education I had on what really happened in North American during “colonization”.)
Fake Like Me by Barbara Bourland (A delicious summer read.)
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (Such a good book. Completely magical, unsentimental, gruff, expansive, and deeply present experience of life on a tiny island, as lived by a grandmother and her granddaughter.)
Native Country of the Heart by Cherríe Moraga (At a moment when I’ve been thinking a lot about assimilation and questions of lineage, I was very excited to read the latest book by Moraga, and I wasn’t disappointed.)
The Stonewall Reader edited by Jason Baumann for the New York Public Libary (You can read my review of this book for Hyperallergic here.)
Alexis by Marguerite Yourcenar (This book was very important to someone very close to me early in their life and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a beautiful and surprising read.)

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (This is a remarkable book and a remarkable accomplishment. I can’t begin to delve into the breadth of content and topics she covers, save to say that it is incredibly prescient. Precarity, entanglements, mutualism, alienation, salvage, all of these ideas are so much of what it is to be alive in this particular moment in history.)
Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour (Studied and admired Latour’s work for years in school, so was eager to read his newest. I found much of it very compelling, though I was disappointed by the final chapter.)
The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish (Love a story within a story.)
The Psychology of an Art Writer by Vernon Lee (Read for a review.)
Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna & Survival Skills by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan (Quite possibly the best birthday present I’ve ever been given. This book is not only overflowing with punny delights, it’s also got some genuinely useful outdoor knowledge.)
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Received this as a birthday present and read it in a week. Ended up having a great conversation with the person who gave it to me about the narratives that drive us, the compulsion to repeat trauma, dissociation, and building a compassionate wisdom about who we are over time.)
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly (I inhaled this book, it surprised me and gave me new information in so many ways. Well worth the read.)
Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry (Because Hansberry is an inspiration and I couldn’t not read this. It’s very well-done and I appreciate the way Perry wove in some of her own perspective/experience.)
Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence by Christina B. Hanhardt (I had this book on my shelf for some time in order to do research for my film. For anyone concerned with queer histories and histories of gentrification, this is a must read.)
My Butch Career by Esther Newton (Read my review for The Los Angeles Review of Books here.)
ESL or You Weren’t Here by Aldrin Valdez (A gorgeous collection, a journey, a memory, an observation.)
Franklin Furnace: Performance & Politics Martha Wilson & Oraison H. Larmon (Read this for a review, it’s a really great sampling for Franklin Furnace’s work. You can access the online version of the book yourself for free here.)
Flights, Olga Tokarczuk (I read a quote recently about how our human love of good storytelling gets in the way of our ability to understand history. This book seems, in many ways, to be ruminating on that and other related thoughts, both in terms of structure and content.)
Liliana Porter in conversation with/en conversación con Inés Katzenstein (A really great way to learn more about Porter and her work.)
The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey Deborah Cramer (Well worth the read for a nature nerd or enthusiast. I could have used even more information about horseshoe crabs.)
Hold Still Sally Mann (Wanted to read this since seeing the excellent exhibit of her work at the National Gallery of Art. It’s really engaging read, and wonderful tumble into Mann’s personal and family history, but there’s something a little too removed from consequence in it, a little too unengaged with her own privilege and position in the world to make it really meaty.)
The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America Sarah Kendzior (This is a good example of why I’ve heard from editors that essay collections are a tough sell. There’s some good stuff in this collection, but it’s short internet-based writing rendered in print and it doesn’t really work. And unfortunately, it wasn’t as insightful as I hoped it would be.)

Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989 edited by Julie Enszer (There is so much goodness in this book: friendship, love, politics, wrestling with mortality… An absolute delight to read.)
Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability Jack Halberstam (A thoughtful book that includes yet another plea for inter-generational connection/discussion among queer folks, which speaks to the ongoing lack of transmission of queer history to young people.)
Beautiful Ruins Jess Walters (A very enjoyable summer read that I had bought awhile back and finally had a chance to read.)
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Matthew Desmond (A solid contemporary addition to the long tradition of yellow journalism and hopefully something that will have push people to take action. It’s also quite a page-turner.)
Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West Lucy Lippard (Picked this up a bit back, when I was thinking about similar questions after having written about the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Great to read insights from someone like Lippard, who also has lived in the Southwest for some time now.)
Black Dove: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me Ana Castillo (Picked this up last year in a wonderful bookshop in St. Louis. An intriguing read from a woman moving through her own realities while also being the mother to young man of color.)
Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression Christine Delphy (Always worthwhile to read foundational texts, and the distinctions she’s making about access to capital and class position still apply in many situations today.)
Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender Riki Anne Wilchins (One of my favorite quotes from the book: “This isn’t about what I am, or how I conceptualize myself, but about your power to require me to have a sex or gender.”)

The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age Astra Taylor (A very thorough and encompassing critique, bringing personal stakes, philosophy, cultural critique, and good old fashioned polemic together. A great quote: “The Internet will not effortlessly create a cultural meritocracy (‘meritocracy’ being a term, it’s too often forgotten, with origins in a political satire, a concept invented to mock an imaginary society in which inequality is considered just).”)
Illness as Metophor Susan Sontag (Have known of this book for quite some time, but only sat down with it now. It’s a great piece of analysis, and all the more poignant given that Sontag was attempting to use what she then assumed was a terrible cancer prognosis to challenge the narratives that were trapping those around her with similar prognoses.)
Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era Paul Preciado (Preciado is clearly a brilliant thinker. There’s some great stuff in here. Though I am curious about some underlying assumptions that I felt were present throughout.)
Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America Rachel Hope Cleves (A wonderful read, handed to me a good friend in their home state of Vermont. Great for a a cozy read.)
The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of ‘Joe’ Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water, Kate Summerscale (Grabbed a copy of this from the Strand one evening after reading the book just below, which mentioned this book as a source. Carstairs was a messy human with vehemently racist and colonialist ideas. Published in 1997, it’s hard not to wonder how this same subject would be treated today, across all aspects of her life.)
Almost Famous Women: Stories, Megan Mayhew Bergman (Recommended to me by a bookseller in a shop near the Vermont border in the late summer of 2016 – about a year ago. Read in its entirety, in happy contentment, while traveling to and from a hike up the Hudson from home.)
The S Word: A Short History of An American Tradition… Socialism, John Nichols (A solid historical overview of yet another thread of American history that we are not taught in most schools and that illuminates a much needed political alternative in the US.)
March: Books One, Two & Three, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (These books provide a fantastic view into the Civil Rights struggles that John Lewis was part of. In particular, it’s a great reminder that not every protest or individual act results in immediate change, but that each action is part of a long effort that takes myriad forms.)
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Women on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Julia Serano (This had long been on my list, but I hadn’t gotten to it, so got it out of the library. Having read it back-to-back with Stryker, I would say the strongest points for me related to the complexity of misogyny as it relates to femininity and the inability of so many to see that their discomfort with gender difference has so much to do with their own unhappiness about the ways they relate to and are treated because of their gender.)
Transgender History, Susan Stryker (This is a great and very approachable history, if a bit short, but there’s a lot here and the shortness helps with the approachability. Plus it’s packed with lots of good info.)
Under the Sea-Wind, Rachel Carson (Saw the recent documentary about her and really wanted to read her work after that. Decided to start at the beginning. The depth of knowledge and research on display is staggering, but the blending it together into a narrative is just as remarkable. No wonder people know and love her writing.)
The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild, Lyanda Lynn Haupt (Adding to my ever-increasing amateur urban natural collection. A lovely and informative read.)
I’m Just A Person, Tig Notaro (A summer read I picked up at the library. Sometimes it is pleasing to hear the same story retold in a different way.)
The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time, Brooke Gladstone (I read Gladstone’s other book, so was excited to hear she had a new one. This is definitely more of a rumination/essay on the current political moment. Has some great points and draws on some intriguing sources, but was a little frustrated with it in the end.)
Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, Douglas Tallamy (Recommended by a fellow Brooklyn Bird Club member as a good entry point to understanding the role of native plants and insects in the health and well-being of local ecosystems and why conservation of native ecosystems matters. I, in my turn, can recommend it for the same.)
Lab Girl, Hope Jahren (An anti-fascist organizer who attended an event at my day job told me he was really enjoying it as part of a science book club he was in. At first I wasn’t really into it, but then it grew on me, particularly one of the main subjects of the book, Jahren’s friendship with her work partner.)
The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture, Bonnie Morris (Research for my film project.)
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (I had a copy that I almost brought on a trip with me last year, but decided to pick it up this spring because I liked the idea of the One Book, One New York effort, for which it was chosen as the 2017 book. Plus, it led to a wonderful subway conversation about diaspora literature.)
AMC’s Mountain Skills Manual, Christian Bisson & Jamie Hannon (Because, obviously. I want mountain skills.)
Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings (A fun intro to Butler’s work for me, though there’s so much going on in this story it’s clear that a lot is lost in the translation to graphic form. Just makes me want to check out one of her other books though.)
Future Sex, Emily Witt (Without intending to, I read this cover to cover in a single day. There is much in this book that I relate to, though I think there are some reasons/angles she didn’t explore about why things are as they are for many.)
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin (No wonder people respond so strongly to the memory of reading this book. It’s devastating and familiar all at once, like so much of Baldwin’s writing.)
Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance, Christopher McDougall (Part of my continued interest in epic journey tales.)
Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism, L.A. Kauffman (Incredibly well-sourced, even down to the credit for the artists who rendered each of the images/posters/buttons she used to illustrate the book. Gave me a great deal more context for what I’ve known of radical politics since college.)
Forward: A Memoir, Abby Wambach (My friend pointed this out on the table as we were leaving the bookstore and I just had to. I am a sucker for a celebrity sports bio. This was not the finest of the form, but I am not sad I bought it—there were more than a few conversations over the text during the weekend I read it.)
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf (The title is frustrating, as are a handful of the early claims made in the book, for their decidedly colonialist bent. But Humboldt himself is a fascinating figure that makes this one well worth the read. Also appreciated the chapters on those whose careers and worth were shaped heavily by Humboldt.)
The Fight to Vote, Michael Waldman (Needed to get a better sense of the history of voting in the US and this was a good source.)
Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, Sarah Glidden (More about the Americans in the book than the people they were visiting, but not necessarily bad because of that. It’s a book primarily about making sense and making meaning in an unfamiliar context, and for that I found it to be a worthwhile read.)
Upstream: Selected Essays, Mary Oliver (There are a number of great essays here, but two of my favorites are the one about Walt Whitman and the one about owls. “For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”)
The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability, Kristen Hogan (A good window into the feminist bookstore movement, but also feminist and lesbian feminist politics, the challenging realities of antiracist practice, and the publishing and bookselling worlds as a whole.)
Solo: One Her Own Adventure, edited by Susan Fox Rogers (I pretty much inhaled this. A friend picked it up at a library book sale and sent it my way—she knows me well.)
Becoming Unbecoming, Una (Spotted this on a shelf at my favorite local bookstore and read half there before I had to go, then got it from the library. Some really great and emotionally complex imagery to go along with a difficult story.)
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Third Edition), Rebecca Solnit (Went looking for advice from activists who had been at it for much longer than me and this came highly recommended. Well worth the read.)
Moby Dick, Herman Melville (I could go on about this, I loved it, the wordy tangents, the humor, the brutality, the stretching out of the tale, the very American sensibility of it all, the wily narrator (was not surprised to be reminded that he and Hawthorne were friends in this regard). I underlined a number of passages.)
Sappho was a Right-On Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism, Sidney Abbot & Barbara Love (There was so much in this book that I felt was still deeply relevant today, not just to lesbians, but to queer women in general. And I felt excited by how strongly they linked the ideas they were talking about to the oppression of many other groups. Well worth the read.)
Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era, Caroline Moorehead (By far the most intriguing thing about this book is the French history that unfolds, and the ways in which revolution was like a ping pong game for decades, rather than a singular event that changed everything. I learned so much through reading this book about notions of revolution—a reminder that glancing history through a specific person’s experience helps ground it and make it more real.)
Come As You Are, Emily Nagoski (This is what people should be teaching in sex ed classes.)
24/7, Jonathan Crary (Like so much good dystopian philosophical writing, this cracks just below the surface of what you thought and makes it worse. However, the heavy references to a lot of art and writing by European men from the first half of the 20th century feels like retrograde misogynist tunnel vision, which reminds me too much of studying philosophy. There’s more to the world Crary, even while I appreciate what you’re exploring here.)
Assata: An Autobiography, Assata Shakur (It’s impossible not to be moved by her story.)
Ship Fever and Other Stories, Andrea Barrett (A wonderful short story collection that drew me in immediately—though admittedly, I am a biased reader because it is perfectly aligned with my interests, focusing as it does on science, those who history would otherwise record as bit players, and the development of knowledge.)
Outdoor Art: Extraordinary Sculpture Parks and Art in Nature, Silvia Langen (Bad, just bad. Reviewed for Hyperallergic.)

Of Being Dispersed, Simone White (Some of the most incisive, sexy, sharply observant, and wry poetry I have read in awhile. Very much recommended.)
John Muir: Nature Writings, John Muir (I didn’t read all 800+ pages, but I read a bit more than half. It is impossible not to notice the racism threaded throughout his writing, particularly as it relates to those indigenous to North America, particularly as he adopts an animate conceptions of plants and animals and even geology that is mirrored in many indigenous philosophies. But there’s America for you—the philosophical contradictions are constant and all too consequential. Reading his work you can, though, easily understand how his exuberance, religiosity in the face of the wilderness, and commitment to preserving it all helped shape the early environmental and parks movement.)
The Cosmopolitans, Sarah Schulman (An engaging look into the psyche of two New Yorkers, living here at a time unfamiliar to me but that haunts so many people’s ideas of the place.)
Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco (While in principal I agree with the overall argument of the book in many ways, I found the text strident and presumptive, which soured me on the thing in general.)
Picasso’s Tears: Poems 1978-2013, Wong May (Saw her work mentioned somewhere and then unearthed two beautiful first editions of her early books at the Brooklyn Public Library. Loved )
When We Fight We Win!: Twenty-First Century Social Movements and the Activists that are Transforming Our World, Greg Jobin-Leeds and AgitArte (Reviewed for Hyperallergic.)
The Rarest Bird in the World: The Search for the Nechisar Nightjar, Vernon R. L. Head (His insistence on overly purple and florid prose makes for a bit of slog trying to get to the story and the facts in this book, which would be a slim, but exciting volume if a good editor had taken a sharp machete to it. But I did still read it, because I wanted to know if they found it. I am a birder after all.)
Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals, Stacy Szymaszek (I spent so many years of my life viewing the world through a very tight frame. A couple of these journals drew me back into questions about those frames.)
When We Were Outlaws, Jeanne Córdova (She does an excellent job of telling a fairly complex story. And the contradictions of her politics and struggles stuck with me as the most interesting points that the book raises, even if she herself didn’t focus on or resolve them.)

The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (The felt like a kissing cousin to Kate Zambreno’s Heroines in the best possible way—serious in its intellectual ambition but also deeply and messily personal. A great combo.)
Gloria Steinem: My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem (I really appreciate how much this book is about driving home the fact that spending time speaking with others in-person is a crucial piece of political organizing. It’s also always interesting to see inside one person’s perspective of how things played out, even with the biases that perspective can come with—so little of the first-hand history of feminist struggles is part of the cultural narrative, every testimony plays a role.)
The Cruising Diaries, Brontez Purnell, illustrated by Janelle Hessig (Soooo dirty; soooo much fun.)
Queer & Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives, Nia King (A great collection of interviews with artists working across many genres, each with their own strategies, outlook, and perspective.)
Yo, Miss, Lisa Wilde (An engaging graphic novel by a teacher who clearly cares deeply for her students.)
Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Café Theater, Edited by Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jill Dolan (Read for review, find the review in Sinister Wisdom 101: Variations, which I guest-edited – my review is accompanied by commentary from Susana Cook. Really appreciated the way the book itself feels like a fun cabaret performance, each act broken up with banter from the hosts/editors and friends.)
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred D. Taylor (A story so very well told – to have to learn about racism with the children in the story, but also to see their unquenchable demand self-determination and desire for all that life has to offer is incredibly compelling.)
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Kimmerer continues to impress and inspire me with her ability to bring together seemingly incompatible worldviews and show that we are better for having many rather than one.)
The Tea Party in the Woods, by Akiko Miyakoshi (Sometimes I love to read a children’s book. And this one was a very endearing and well-illustrated twist on Little Red Riding Hood.)
Watch Me: A Memoir, by Anjelica Huston (Sometimes I love a celebrity memoir. Nothing has ever topped Andre Agassi and his ghost writer’s Open. I admire Huston and was interested in her story, but this book is quite dull and assumes that the reader knows all the same people and cultural references in the book. Was a bummer.)
Activism, Alliance Building, and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, by Sara DeTurk (Will be writing about this for an issue of Sinister Wisdom that I’m editing. There are some great points in it, but the fact that it’s $75 makes it tough to figure out how people would be able to access and make use of it. Some thoughts on the book are part of a review on Hyperallergic and also in Sinister Wisdom 101: Variations.)
Getting Back, by Cindy Rizzo (I do love a dose of erotica and romance now and again. I had the great pleasure of meeting Cindy and so decided to by her new book and wasn’t disappointed.)

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Moss, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (This book is so gorgeous, and deftly and beautifully brings together science, cultural history, memoir, and well-wrought prose. I cannot recommend it enough.)
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales (Because survival and epic journey lit and television is my vice of choice these days. But ultimately it’s a fascinating look at human psychology and vision of life itself as an act of survival.)
Ghost Horse, by Thomas McNeely (Written by a friend, this book sent me more than once into the strange tailspin of adolescence, and also showed me unfamiliar but fascinating if heartbreaking realities in Houston, Texas of the 1970s.)
Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art, by Nancy Princenthal (One of the most striking things that comes from reading this book is how much people impose their own heavily inflected, and widely divergent, ideas about who Martin was and what her work is onto her being and paintings. Her intense desire to control people’s readings of her, in some ways, exposes her more to speculation and opinion and idolatry. This may very well be the last book I read about her, focusing instead on what lead me to it in the first place – her work.)

“The impulse to express and understand will always compel some people with integrity. And integrity has its own strange trajectory—greater than any one person. Now that is a good lesson of history.”
-Sarah Schulman in The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012)

By Alexis