Killing Rage: Ending Racism, bell hooks
Reading the work of bell hooks is at the same time exhilarating and exasperating. Exhilarating because the truth of her words shines brilliantly on every page and exasperating because of the sheer quantity of people who choose, willfully or otherwise, to ignore them. Killing Rage was published in 1995 and talks about various ways we, as a society, working together, can end racism, and also what Black people can do to encourage self love and self preservation in the white supremacist, imperialist, capitalistic, patriarchal society that has only itself in mind. She wants us to “see self love as a radical political agenda”. Imagine that. Over 25 years ago, bell hooks was preaching self love, a term that came into popular use only a few short years ago because (white) people choose to consistently ignore Black women and the wisdom they possess. She also talks about being anti-capitalist, which does not mean rejecting “economic self-sufficiency or material well-being” but rather a rejection of excess, something I think everyone, but especially Americans, should strive for. Reading hooks’ work directly shows me, and all people, but particularly all white people, how to decolonize our minds, spirits, and bodies, and how to be better in general.
Everything Under, Daisy Johnson
Everything Under is described as a retelling of the Oedipus story but it is also so much more than that—it deals with the relationships between mothers and daughters, the regret some parents have upon becoming parents, the desperation others feel in order to become parents, and whether fate or free will is the deciding factor in our lives. It takes place on the river, in a community that lives by its own rules and with its own stories and therefore with its own consequences. Jumping forward and back in time and with changing narrators, the reader is never 100% sure of where we are or what each character knows as multiple storylines unfold. What Johnson has crafted is an intricate narrative made up of numerous stories that form an unbelievable whole. Normally I don’t take much stock in the blips chosen to go on the covers of books, but what Celeste Ng says is true: “Weird and wild and wonderfully unsettling. You’ll emerge gasping and haunted.” And, I’m officially at the age when people my age are creating amazing things: Johnson was born in 1990.