Issue 94: Reading does not change the facts of life, but it does change the atmosphere

Scattered reading by a scattered brain for a scattered heart

My sister lives in Berlin and, in an attempt to make me feel better about the election results, said to me… Don’t let this get to you; you see it’s the same shitshow everywhere. She meant of course that Bulgaria, where we are from, has been politically fucked forever and the extreme right has been on the rise everywhere in Europe. But I caught myself FEELING something like… I don’t know… resistance? offense? indignation?!… I didn’t say anything to her but what I wanted to say was… Yeah, but America is different. We are not like that.

Me being a total dork at my naturalization ceremony in 2018. But you can tell how truly happy and proud I felt.

I chuckle now as a realize that this immigrant has finally absorbed American Exceptionalism through osmosis but I honestly believed that. I believed that we were better. As an immigrant who has traveled quite a bit throughout Europe and lived in Germany for a bit too… I can truly say that I have never felt more welcomed and embraced than I feel when I am here, in America. But now, of course, I know what Black women have known all along. We are very much LIKE THAT. And we all need to continue to live with that knowledge.

So, my brain has been super scattered and I am really having a hard time focusing. Work has been hard and reading has been harder. But here are some reading related things that have felt good and meaningful (if not exactly FUN or ENJOYABLE) and have started giving some structure to my thoughts.

1| Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

Reading Dr. Christina Sharpe’s stunning Ordinary Notes. The book is a collection of 248 fragments — personal memories, reflections, reprints of public artifacts, letters, photographs, etc. — that together weave a symphonic tale of everyday African American life. I am only 30 notes into this and already questioning everything.

On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA, titled The Drum Major Instinct

Last Friday in an attempt to help my own daughter make sense of the election results, I organized a visit for her and some of her little friends to The National Civil Rights Museum here in Memphis. The Museum is a stunning tribute to African American history and resilience, built at The Loraine Motel — the site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. We had a guided tour with one of the museum educators who started us with age-appropriate storytime about why people have fought so hard for their right to vote and then took us through a tour of the exhibit, specifically pausing to reflect at some of the events that involved young people — the student sit-ins, the bus boycotts, the efforts toward integrating schools. After feeling so sad all week that Trump had won, we left with the kids feeling hopeful and inspired… that they could use the power of their voice to bring about change. And yet, Dr. Sharpe writes:

… the lesson that an institution imagines it is imparting — or the ones that we imagine the institution imagining it is imparting — like racism is bad or look how far we’ve come — is not the only, or even, perhaps, the primary lesson or note to take hold. The imagination of whiteness is also at work, undoing the lesson, restructuring, and constantly renewing antiblack racism.

So here I am now wondering if we just gave these children a lecture on white supremacy.

2| Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

I am also tandem-reading Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami with

Ochuko Akpovbovbo

. Without giving away any spoilers, I am finding the book — its reflection on womanhood and the female body and how different we are as grown women from the women we imagined we would become when we were girls — incredibly poignant and heartbreaking right now. How dysmorphic this experience of becoming a woman can be, how disorienting: your body changing and betraying you and keeping you hostage for as long as you live… As I was reading (and I am still only about 30% into the book), I was having flashbacks to being 7 months pregnant, working for a company that was going through a rough period at the time and all of us feeling unsure, uncertain and aggravated and me pointing at my giant belly and telling a co-worker that I felt trapped by my circumstances knowing that I would not be able to leave because I needed the 6 weeks short-term disability leave pay that would cover my tiny maternity leave even though there was nothing I wanted to do more. I wanted to leave so badly. Post-Dobbs America feels similarly suffocating, especially as a raise a girl in a deeply red state with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. I can’t stand the thought that the flight of her heart may one day be interrupted by the limitations placed on her body.

3| Claire-Louise Bennett in conversation w/ Josie Mitchell at Granta

Finally, I was looking for a podcast and hit play on this conversation between Granta editor Josie Mitchell and novelist Claire-Louise Bennett.

They talk about Bennett’s books Pond and Checkout 19, but also about rereading books and how incredibly divergent our reading experiences can be… I loved the conversation so much that I immediately ordered Pond but also have been literally listening to the interview on repeat as I work on this rainy day and there has been something so comforting about listening to these two woman get into the depth of things so beautifully and so quickly. I know I say this a lot but in our insane culture of fleety superficiality…. all I crave is depth and substance and meaningful connection. So, it felt like such a gift to witness an example of that and on the topic of books and reading which I love so much.

In addition to the books above, I am tandem-reading Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar with

Michelle Martin

as an attempt to put a dent in our TBRs before the end of the year. I also JUST received my pre-ordered copy of Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik and the promo videos have been so gossipy and fun that I am now reading this book too. So, all of a sudden I am a total spazz and reading 4 books at the same time.

This is decidedly NOT how I roll most of the time… but as I was telling Michelle earlier this week, I honestly feel so happy to be a reader right now because I don’t know how I would be coping otherwise. To paraphrase Dr. Sharpe, the books don’t change the facts of my life but they do change the atmosphere.

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