What I'm Reading: June
We're halfway through 2023!
Remember I said this was an accountability space?
I didn’t finish one single book in May. Not a single one.
Don’t get me wrong, I made an honest attempt. I cleared my schedule of all the work and travel from the first few months of the year. All of the books I had were either gifted or at my library, so it wasn’t an inaccessible feat.
I started each one at different times as to not get overwhelmed, yet summer depression lingered in the midst, and I said you know what? I’m not going to do this. Again, we talk about reading being about joy, right? Reading is supposed to be for fun, and forcing myself to finish reading when my heart wasn’t in it just didn’t sit well with me. So, I stopped reading. I let myself feel my feels and fill up my time with sleep, sitting in nature and just being still. Ok I can’t lie I also consumed a lot of Degrassi reruns BUT, still, I didn’t force myself to read, and the time I did spend with the books didn’t feel pressured or weighted or like I had to accomplish any goals. That felt good.
So I’m carrying that good book energy into June, which is Black Music Month and Pride for those of us in the US Empire, by spending my time luxuriating in all things Black and Gay (which honestly is me year-round, but with a little extra uumph). I've got a list to read full of queer POC fiction, poetry and essays but if I don’t get to them all, if I don’t finish them all, that’s ok! At least we attempted, right?
And these books aren’t going anywhere, because even if there’s a war on knowledge right now, books will always find a way to travel if we seek them.
Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia
When Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, how she struggles.
Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia’s identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, gun culture, and more, Another Appalachia mixes nostalgia and humor, sadness and sweetness, personal reflection and universal questions.
Friday I’m In Love by Camryn Garrett
Mahalia Harris wants.
She wants a big Sweet Sixteen like her best friend, Naomi.
She wants the super-cute new girl Siobhan to like her back.
She wants a break from worrying--about money, snide remarks from white classmates, pitying looks from church ladies . . . all of it.
Then inspiration strikes: It's too late for a Sweet Sixteen, but what if she had a coming-out party? A singing, dancing, rainbow-cake-eating celebration of queerness on her own terms.
The idea lights a fire beneath her, and soon Mahalia is scrimping and saving, taking on extra hours at her afterschool job, trying on dresses, and awkwardly flirting with Siobhan, all in preparation for the coming out of her dreams. But it's not long before she's buried in a mountain of bills, unfinished schoolwork, and enough drama to make her English lit teacher blush. With all the responsibility on her shoulders, will Mahalia's party be over before it's even begun?
When They Tell You to Be Good by Prince Shakur
After immigrating from Jamaica to the United States, Prince Shakur's family is rocked by the murder of Prince's biological father in 1995. Behind the murder is a sordid family truth, scripted in the lines of a diary by an outlawed uncle hell-bent on avenging the murder of Prince's father. As Shakur begins to unravel his family's secrets, he must navigate the strenuous terrain of coming to terms with one's inner self while confronting the steeped complexities of the Afro-diaspora.
When They Tell You to Be Good charts Shakur's political coming of age from closeted queer kid in a Jamaican family to radicalized adult traveler, writer, and anarchist in Obama and Trump's America. Shakur journeys from France to the Philippines, South Korea, and elsewhere to discover the depths of the Black experience, and engages in deep political questions while participating in movements like Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock. By the end, Shakur reckons with his identity, his family's immigration, and the intergenerational impacts of patriarchal and colonial violence.
Examining a tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, When They Tell You to Be Good shines a light on what we all must ask of ourselves--to be more than what America envisions for the oppressed--as Shakur compels readers to take a closer, deeper look at the political world of young, Black, queer, and radical millennials today.
The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez
This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.
Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby
Samantha Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She dodges calls from Hollywood and flop sweats on the red carpet at premieres (well, one premiere). But nothing is ever as it seems online, where she can crop out all the ugly parts.
Irby got a lot of weird emails about Carrie Bradshaw, and not only is there diarrhea to avoid, but now--anaphylactic shock. She is turned away from restaurants for being inappropriately dressed and looks for the best ways to cope, i.e., reveling in the offerings of QVC and adopting a deranged pandemic dog. Quietly Hostile makes light as Irby takes us on another outrageously funny tour of all the gory details that make up the true portrait of a life behind the screenshotted depression memes. Relatable, poignant, and uproarious, once again, Irby is the tonic we all need to get by.
Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought edited by Briona Simone Jones
Using "Black Lesbian" as a capacious signifier, Mouths of Rain includes writing by Black women who have shared intimate and loving relationships with other women, as well as Black women who see bonding as mutual, Black women who have self-identified lesbian, Black women who have written about Black Lesbians, and Black women who theorize about and see the word lesbian as a political descriptor that disrupts and critiques capitalism, heterosexism, and heteropatriarchy. Taking its title from a poem by Audre Lorde, Mouths of Rain addresses pervasive issues such as misogynoir and anti-blackness while also attending to love, romance, "coming out," and the erotic.
So we have choices! You can read one, or all, or none, no pressure! My only requirement is that you enjoy it. Maybe we can go live on IG and talk about one of them later in the month? You just have to let me know which one, but I’m down!
Until next time, <3.