links plurk | 
this is traditionally my monthly reading plurk but I think I might experiment by dropping other forms of content in here
What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?
I'm not in a space this week where I can volunteer time to make icons or do coding commissions for charity (maybe in a week or so)
extreme olsen replacement
but one thing I could do pretty easily is put together a reading list for understanding american slavery and thereby some of the origins of our current troubles. would this help anyone practice anti-racism? i do not know.
it would at least be a very different set of books.
anyway, this article struck me in part because I read the bluest eye in tenth grade english class, and I certainly got some things out of it, being guided, but not the essential things, you know?
and I'm not one of those people who finds reading something for school ruins a book, a ton of my favorite books I read originally for some class or another and appreciate them more because of that
but tenth grade was not the time for me and the bluest eye
I think, as the article mentions, part of the problem is this is a terrible time for heavy books
not for me though, all heavy books all the time
like my mom is someone who would methodically read thru the list and appreciate it, but she's super high risk and dealing with more anxiety than she's ever had in her life I think
lmao ur the queen of heavy reading idk how you do it
rebecca solnit has a lot of nice revolutionary books disguised as lighter reading, but she's not black and she doesn't deep dive into systemic racism and how to dismantle it, at least in those books
maybe between the world and me would be work idk
yeah and… how to read a book is just a learned skill. i don't think being black automatically means you comprehend the ways toni morrison plays with syntax, because it's art, it's constructed, there's a lot of craft there
but also she's writing specifically for black women and that's something you also have to get
a lot of white people don't even understand that catcher in the rye is about depression
because a lot of white people read catcher in the rye age 15, when they quite likely do not understand that they, themselves, are depressed
i've never tried to do guided reading outside a class before, surely there are resources you could look up to help you through a book like that, right? where would i start looking 
...
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valid
personally I find it helpful to read essays by people I like about books I have already read, esp if they're in some way tricky
oho that's a good idea
there are a lot of books assigned in high school especially that like… looking back, these books were too advanced
nice nice ... i wanna broaden some perspectives but i also don't wanna just like. read it and not read it, you know
I also like to read authors talk about their writing
also some things become clearer upon rereading when you aren't just trying to see what happens next
oh yeah when I read a book I also read reviews of that book, critical response, &c
sometimes I look at the works cited and follow citations
do the basic jstor search. idk, depends on the type of book.
you probably don't need to do that if you decide "hey i'm just gonna read some fantasy books with kissing in them by black authors"
yeah altho
might be worthwhile for helen oyeyemi
thinking more critically about the media you consume doesn't have to be done at the level of "capitalism and slavery"
also if you want to read the tnc/roxanne gay wakanda stuff you're unfortunately going to probably have to read the wikipedia summary of avx
anyway, the usefulness of guided reading inside of a class is that presumably there's a method to the syllabus, a design— I don't think crowdsourced lists off the internet function the same way
how could they? but it's something to be aware of.
they are at least helpful to point at white people on the internet who are like HELP ME UNDERSTAAAAAAAAAND
(but you can google around for syllabi, and sometimes that will even come with discussion questions or homework, which can be another way of challenging yourself to think about the books in question.)
I didn't mean it as a criticism of a crowdsourced list
democratizing the canon has its own benefits!!
tru!!!
but if you're thinking about doing guided reading, you also need to think about who is doing the guiding and to what purpose.
honestly, though, I think most millennials know how to question their sources, everyone's been to facebook
yeah I mean
in the context of recommending books, the reading lists are helpful to send to well-meaning parents/relatives so you don't have to do free personalized courses on the connection between capitalism and racism all the time
I'm laughing b/c my family is not like that, I am sure that some are and that this is why these specific lists exist, but things I'd never forward
but I was also thinking, like "here is a list of black sci-fi authors" the broader it is the more useful it is, in a sense
one function of the standard canon is that it minimizes the voices outside of its boundaries, which has obviously had a marginalizing effect on black literature historically. but also: if everyone reads the same books on anti-racism we'll all think and talk about it the same way, using a similar framework.
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that's a zinger
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you have the best drama
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