Some time ago, our department put out a list of Reading Recommendations for those wishing to learn more about Black Lives Matter. With the aim of expanding on that effort, our DEI committee would like to provide an update on some of the works that we are currently reading or have recently read that touch on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion:
We're interested in reading books that change, challenge, and expand our thinking on what's happening in our lives and in the world around us. We hope you'll find some exciting or intriguing titles on this list. For those interested in reading specifically about white supremacy, policing, and racial justice, we encourage you to revisit our earlier list of recommended titles. You may also want to explore Falvey Library's diversity and inclusion subject guide.
ADRIENNE PERRY: I’m reading bell hooks Ain’t I a Woman, which she began writing in her early twenties and first published in 1981. This book has been on our shelves for years, but I decided to pick it up recently because I wanted to read more of hooks’ work given her passing at the end of 2021, but also because I’ve found her writings about teaching and love so galvanizing. I also want to center my reading around scholars, artists, and writers of color, particularly Black women. Ain’t I a Woman feels really relevant now, as it has me thinking about feminisms and the “long” “arc of the moral universe.”
TRAVIS Foster:I just finished Alexis Hall’s A Lady for a Duke. It’s a Bridgerton-esque romance novel with a trans heroine. I picked it up for a novel that gives its protagonist complex humanity and a happy ending, something too often missing from contemporary depictions and transphobic stereotypes. And I love the cover!
JEAN LUTES What I’m reading …
Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and its Role in the Climate Crisis (2022) – because Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss made me want to learn more about peat. (I know, a book made me want to read another book –but what do you expect?) It’s relevant to me now because of my moral panic about climate change and how we’re not doing nearly enough about it.
Farah Jasmine Griffin’s Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (2021) – because a friend recommended it, because it’s uplifting, and because I’ve been excited to learn more about the long history of what Gholdy Muhammad calls “historically responsive literacy” in Black communities. It’s relevant to me now because of the problem of mass incarceration and ongoing police violence against racial minorities.
YUMI LEE: I’m currently reading Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (2022) – it’s a novel told from the perspective of Joan, a Chinese-American woman living in New York City and working as a doctor in the ICU at a hospital just before the COVID pandemic hits. It hits on so many relevant issues – what it’s like to grow up different from those around you, power dynamics in the workplace, familial conflict, anti-Asian violence – but what drew me in the most was the utterly unique voice of the narrator Joan, who is charismatic, funny, wise, and bold. Highly recommend!
CHARLOTTE DAVIDSON: I’m currently reading The Dating Divide: Race and Dating in the Era of Online Romance by Celeste Vaughan Curington, Jennifer H. Lundquist, and Ken-you Lin. This book takes a look at “digital-sexual racism,” a form of racism that takes place in the online sphere, amplified by the idea that people can hide behind a mask. It takes a theoretical and historical look at how different racial groups are affected by this online dating, but also how dating is very gendered. The authors researched different dating websites and how people of different racial backgrounds, sexual identities, and genders are affected by this modern form of dating. It touches a lot on how early policy in America, specifically anti-miscegenation laws, slavery, and heteronormativity, can explain why, even though the internet is a useful place to expose oneself to many different people, racism and sexism still impede on the online dating experience. It also touches on stereotyping and how that influences the chatting that takes place on these dating sites. I think this is a wonderful book for college students to read. As students turn 18, online dating becomes a lot more popular amongst one’s peers and social circles. It is important to understand the ideas that shape one's dating experience, as well as the history of what dating has looked like in America for people outside of a hegemonic group.
MARY MULLEN: I’ve been reading and re-reading a lot of Edward Said’s criticism and political writing these days to think about Palestine and the difficulty of representing Palestinian peoples’ experiences under occupation. I’ve especially liked returning to After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986) which reflects on photos by Jean Mohr. On Said’s suggestion, these photos were exhibited at the 1983 International Conference on the Question of Palestine. But the participating states refused to allow any writing to accompany them: there could be pictures but no explanatory text. After negotiations, the UN eventually allowed the name of the location of the photograph to be included as long as there was no other text. After the Last Sky thus offers insight about Palestine, Palestinian people, and occupation but also about the politics of language more broadly. When I finish reading Said, I hope to turn to Suad Amiry’s Mother of Strangers (2022)--a novel set in the cosmopolitan city of Jaffa between 1947 and 1951, and thus narrating the Nakba or Palestinian Catastrophe. I also have been meaning to watch Farha on Netflix.
LISA SEWELL: I’ve been reading The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois by Honoree Fanon Jeffers and I can’t recommend it enough. It is a long, deeply imagined, beautifully written/constructed and utterly absorbing novel that tracks and bravely tries to think through the complex legacies of settler colonialism, the slave trade, reconstruction, segregation and the civil rights and Black power movements on the lives and “souls” of Black people. The story moves between the past and the present and is partly told through the eyes of Ailey Pearl Garfield as she tries to negotiate and understand her own identity as she learns about and investigates her ancestral roots, which include free and enslaved Blacks, Creek tribal leaders, as well as Scottish and other white colonialists. It’s a big, satisfying read but also harrowing as Jeffers does not shy away from difficult subjects like the unremitting violence of plantation life, the complexities of colorism and intra-racial racism, and the silence around domestic sexual abuse. It also takes a deep dive into the history of historically Black colleges and universities, and developments in Black intellectual life. I’m making it sound really dry, but it’s not! Ailey is a funny, vulnerable and utterly human guide that I fell in love with.
