This is my annual list of favorite books read during the year. The number of books selected corresponds with the age I’m turning that year. For 33, the Jesus year, I picked among the 125 books I read this year and included 1 I’m still working through. I also buckled down this year and got my dissertation done, so reading slowed a bit in the second half.
As has been much the case these last couple of years, my reading heavily skewed towards forgettable superhero stuff I could binge mid-bout of insomnia. Still, I’m glad to have read some great runs, such as Zdarky’s Daredevil and Brian Michael Bendis’s X-men run.
I’m keeping it bare bones this year as I’d like to rest. As opposed to previous years, you’ll get a list plus my pasted Goodreads review if I wrote one or a quote if I read a Kindle version. I write notes for all the books I read, which are scattered across many tiny notebooks. Maybe I’ll revisit and say some more about each book. Thanks for reading. Cheers to 2023, when I’ll finally transition to reading more non-fiction, I promise.
“Some truths are so plain, people think they’re garbage, Mami says. Nobody wants to be told: Be a good person, be nice to your family, be kind. But sometimes that is the answer.”
I wrote a review for this in one of those aforementioned tiny notebooks that I’m glad never made it publicly. Instead, here’s a line (I highlighted whole passages from this book but better to make this list digestible).
“My primary opinion on polyamory was that it seemed like a lot of fun for logistics fetishists.”
from my Goodreads review, “God, I find it so annoying how much I like Tom king superhero books when he does them from this perspective, an outlier character existing in these universes. Art is also bonkers good and has a vintage quality to it that feels like a 1950’s film noir poster yet so much of this takes place during the day, which I love. It’s such a cool book that was so fun to read, perhaps the lightest thematically of his superhero works and yet there’s a darkness at the panels emerging from the mystery that is so compelling. God, I hate that King was a CIA pig. I’d feel much less reluctance liking his work if he was a postman or art designer before finding the comics profession. God, King. King god.”
from my Goodreads review, “A book full of poems where the persona does not give a fuck what you think. Full of screams and frankness about how shit many things are while celebrating all that isn’t. You will recognize what it is to depart, to grieve, and coast through cities that rather see you in the dirt.”
from my Goodreads review, “I have a lot of thoughts on this book. Perhaps the first book of science fiction I’ve read largely based in my home country Belize written by an American. Tbh, I know some of my critiques stem from envy that she beat to the punch although after reading I see where we diverge and that her work and whatever work I compose can coexist…”
from my Goodreads review of Book 1 (read altogether over a few days so applicable here) “O Grant, you saw so much pain at a time when many only saw profit. This comic is good, but for me it’s all time. What Grant and Buddy wrestle with here hits close to home. What can one [Animal] Man do in the face of violence and destructive without being violent or destroying. This comic, man this comic, it hurts so good.”
from my Goodreads review, “The year only starts for me after reading the first excellent book and this one was it. 2022, come at me. I have tea and places to lie down.”
from my Goodreads review, “A great collection of short comics that repeatedly reckon with contemporary dread, the privilege and anxieties of art making and how much sex to be had in a lifetime. Highly recommend to anyone seeking calm amid another’s all-consuming breakdown.”
from my Goodreads review, “A part of me wishes I was in a scorched earth 2050 able to just mainline volume after volume of Reckless. I’ll just have to settle for the still astonishing biannual release Brubaker and Collins churn out this fun, thrilling comic. Recommend to all into noir, and grateful this volume spotlights the best sidekick in comics.”
from my Goodreads review, “Perhaps one of my favorite books ever? I love this novel. So much sensuousness and texture. Great characters and a plot that just keeps going. Took a long time to read but never because i lost interest. I remember so much of this book very clearly. Magical realism seemed to have lost its energy. This has brought it all back.”
from my Goodreads review, “”…desks or vases probably don’t get hurt…even when they’re broken.” (‘Heaven’ 43) This book about bullying, abuse, and justice in the world of kids was a difficult read for me. What I find most remarkable is Kawakami’s aptitude for empathy without sentimentality for her characters facing immense abuse by their peers. I’m glad to be through with it, an much of it will linger with me for a while.”
2 years into a global pandemic, and as always, art has been fundamental to making it through life for me. Keeping with tradition, here are 32 pieces of art I’ve dug in 2021—one for every year I’ve been on this plane of existence. I expanded it to all forms of art (music, film, television and books) this year to better encapsulate what I was engaging with this year. Hope you find something here that becomes a new favorite of yours.
1) Sonny Boy (Episode 1) from Madhouse Studios
2) Succession
3) Return of the Obra Dinn
4) Parallel Lives by Schrauwen, Olivier
from my February 10 review
“holy heck. this collection of speculative fiction comics from Schrauwen were 5/6 bangers, and the one that isn’t only doesn’t make the cut because I have a personal distaste for tiny panels on a whole page (thankfully that story is limited to 2 pages).
What Schrawuen does here is what I also love about the work of Sophia Foster Domino and Tillie Walden’s speculative fiction work: the depiction of a future that’s far from perfect but livable and often great in ways that can’t be discounted (universal income anyone?). Schrauwen then uses these various settings for hilarious stories that take unexpected turns and sometimes the oddest happy endings. I never thought I’d read a comic whose climax involved scatting and trolling of cerebral nanocomputers but that’s what my favorite story here does.
Schrauewen, marry me, please.”
5) “Plastic Love” by 竹内 まりや (Mariya Takeuchi)
6) The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh
from my November 13 review
“Easily one of the strongest books I’ve read on the role that the arts and humanities have played in perpetuating humanity’s suspended response to global warming. A very engaging text with great examples from literature and history that also opened my understanding of the role Asian countries have played in shaping our present carbon world. I especially appreciated his critical reading of the Paris Agreement and was compelled by his argument regarding the role of organized religion in a global climate movement.”
7) Dead Ringers (1988) Directed by David Cronenberg
8) The Man Without Talent by Yoshiharu Tsuge, Ryan Holmberg (Translator)
9) Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell
from my November 9 review,
“One of the best green lantern books I’ve ever read. I was anticipating this one since it was first announced and it surpassed expectations. Great sci fi action that establishes a new character in the form of Sojourner and also a great piece of socio political intrigue that reminded me of some of Le Guin’s world building experiments. Recommend to all interested in a fun and fresh anti copaganda GL book.”
10) “Freak Like Me’ by Caroline Rose, from Superstar (2020)
11) La Llorona (2019) Directed by Jayro Bustamante
12) Invincible Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley (Illustrator), Cory Walker (Illustrator)
13) Untourable Album by Men I Trust (2021)
14) Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
from my September 18 review,
“I was so moved by this book in its expressions of the confusion adulthood brings when we don’t subscribe to cis her capitalist dreams and the fact that those lives can yet be imperfect, messy, and lacking satisfying closure.”
15) One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) ‘L’une chante, l’autre pas’ Directed by Agnès Varda
16) Spirit Farer
17) Moms by Ma, Yeong-shin, Janet Hong (Translator)
from my March 4 review,
i was so engrossed in this series of vignettes in the lives of 50-something Korean women navigating work, love, and lazy sons. This is largely a slice of life tale which is not to diminish its merits, but to commend Ma for the care and labor he put towards rendering the lives of ordinary women. There’s a lot of pain and humor in these stories, and I’m definitely gonna revisit this on a low day.
18) Dickinson
19) The Seeds by Ann Nocenti, David Aja (Artist)
from my May 11 review
“this comic is under 200 pages and yet so much happens that other books spend a hundred issues to achieve. The story compression here works well because the writing and art respect the reader. They know how much info fits in a panel narratively and visually. This might be one of the best comics about journalism and cli-fi. I wanted more issues, but the ending works so well that nothing else needs to be said on the themes of resilience, decay, and grief the book handles with care and craft.”
20) Children of Mu-town by Jusichi Masumura
21) Bergman Island (2021) Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
22) What Remains of Edith Finch
23) Gregory’s Girl (1980) Directed by Bill Forsyth
24) Far In by Helado Negro (2021)
25) Asako I & II (2018) ‘寝ても覚めても’ Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
26) Miss Universe by Nilüfer Yanya (2018)
27) Annette (2021) Directed by Leos Carax
opening scene from ‘Annette’
28) Phantom Thread (2017) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
29) The Heartbreak Kid (1972) Directed by Elaine May
2020, amirite? We’re somehow nearing the end of one of the most taxing and terrifying years. Amid unprecedented fires, hurricanes, the ongoing reign of the U.S. empire, inspiring organizing in Central and South America, and a global pandemic, there were still many days of mundanity (perhaps even more than usual for those not completely destabilized and unhoused this year) to fill up.
This year, as of December 10, I choose to occupy my time reading about 170 titles, comprised of mostly comics with novels, essay collections, and unfortunately just a few poetry books. In celebration of my upcoming 31st birthday on December 20, I sifted through all those titles to come up with 31 books that have left indelible marks on my body and psyche.
I may write more about a few of these over the next week, and I may not. It’ll all depend on how time feels. Either way, you can read my review of some of these titles over on Goodreads. I recommend any of these books to folks looking for a balm, a laugh or a sword as we head into 2021, which will not be a reset but an extension of challenges we faced in 2020.
This year I decided to pick 30 books I read so far this year in the lead up to my 30th birthday. I’ll be posting these on December 2, 10, and 20 in batches of 10 in no particular order other than trying to get a bit of each major genre (poetry, comics, prose) in every post. Along with each book are quotes excerpted from my reading notes, select poems, and other miscellanies. Also, some of the title hyperlinks will take you to neat interviews and other pieces about the work.
I got good this year at dropping books I wasn’t getting much from so I really dug, and in many cases loved, most of what’s listed on my 2019 reading challenge. There are a few more books I hope to get through before the year’s end, including Clarice Lispector’s Complete Short Stories collection, Eleanor Davis’ The Hard Tomorrow and making a dent in Surveillance Capitalism. I’m very happy that so much of my time this year has been spent among books, and thanks for checking out this somewhat arbitrary list.
This year I decided to pick 30 books I read so far this year in the lead up to my 30th birthday. I’ll be posting these on December 2, 10, and 20 in batches of 10 in no particular order other than trying to get a bit of each major genre (poetry, comics, prose) in every post. Along with each book are quotes excerpted from my reading notes, select poems, and other miscellanies. Also, some of the title hyperlinks will take you to neat interviews and other pieces about the work.
I got good this year at dropping books I wasn’t getting much from so I really dug, and in many cases loved, most of what’s listed on my 2019 reading challenge. There are a few more books I hope to get through before the year’s end, including Clarice Lispector’s Complete Short Stories collection, Eleanor Davis’ The Hard Tomorrow and making a dent in Surveillance Capitalism. I’m very happy that so much of my time this year has been spent among books, and thanks for checking out this somewhat arbitrary list.
This year I decided to pick 30 books I read so far this year in the lead up to my 30th birthday. I’ll be posting these on December 2, 10, and 20 in batches of 10 in no particular order other than trying to get a bit of each major genre (poetry, comics, prose) in every post. Along with each book are quotes excerpted from my reading notes, select poems, and other miscellanies. Also, some of the title hyperlinks will take you to neat interviews and other pieces about the work.
I got good this year at dropping books I wasn’t getting much from so I really dug, and in many cases loved, most of what’s listed on my 2019 reading challenge. There are a few more books I hope to get through before the year’s end, including Clarice Lispector’s Complete Short Stories collection, Eleanor Davis’ The Hard Tomorrow and making a dent in Surveillance Capitalism. I’m very happy that so much of my time this year has been spent among books, and thanks for checking out this somewhat arbitrary list.
More than any year past, I passed my time reading. When I felt helpless about the state of my life and the world, I read. When I needed to be reminded about why I write, I read. I read poetry just as soon as I wake up, I read non-fiction academic texts during the day, and I read prose in the evening. On Tuesdays I read for two hours at a local bar, reveling in the ambient sounds of people chatting. Sometimes I felt guilty for having dedicated so much of my time to reading and not to making more of my own work. Sometimes reading allowed me to avoid addressing problems directly, a distraction tactic with the distinction of being considered productive and intellectual although at this point I don’t believe that myself.
In commemoration of my 29th year alive (grateful to be alive!!!), I am sharing 29 books I read this year that resonated with me, books that gave me opportunities where I loved humanity, borscht, and hot hot heat simultaneously or honed in on how deeply flawed and compassionate humans can be in the same body. Reading these books reoriented me again and again away from despair, sometimes metabolizing the despair just enough to eke out another week and at other times transfiguring a feeling that unstops a lifelong blockage.
I am grateful to those who share their work through comics, poetry and prose, and equally grateful for the people that provide writers, poets, and comics makers the space and time to create these works.The affordance of being able to create art is something that many are deprived the opportunity of, and I hope that in the next year the people I get to read will be among those historically deprived of the time and space to imagine in text the future worlds necessary to save ourselves from impending doom.
Guidelines
I created a few rules for selecting pieces to make the list cover a wide spread of the types of pieces I’ve been reading as well as to prevent this list from privileging books I most recently read. In addition to these rules, I wanted to feature work from comics, poetry and what I’m throwing into the untidy category of prose.
At least 7 are not by authors based in the US
At least 7 came out in the past year
At least 15 have to be by contemporary authors
At least 7 have to be released prior to the 21st century
(In order of earliest to most recently read)
Moon Bath by Yanick Lahens, translated by Emily Gogolak , January 7-January 10
“She could have listened for hours to this speech pulled from the thickness of the days. Because the time spent talking like this isn’t time, it’s light. The time spent talking like this, it’s water washing the soul, the ‘bon ange’.” (40, Lahens trans Gogolak).
My nephew and I waited for his mom in a low lit room. He looked for a good time then gave up and joined me. We read a few pages.
in a Polish Hill bar right after acquiring at Copacetic comics. Had first pierogies of life, ate fancier perogies later. Life felt good reading next to someone I love.
Read throughout Pittsburgh. Once, for hours in a room half-occupied by a future bathroom. Last time I read that long hiding in a tent from a tornado in Virginia.
From review “This is a fucking stunning collection that really broke open language to me in a new way. Seriously. Get your eyes and heart on thus asap”
None of my notebooks mention this book at all even though I loved almost every story, but my notes do show that I made a flan and ate curds.
What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg (Goodreads Author), Fiona Smyth (Illustrator), June 19
Was deeply moved seeing someone approach discussing sex to children in a way that does not privilege any particular form of how a baby gets made. Cute drawings throughout
From review “the bodies in this comic feel dense with history and their movements carry weight in every flourish..Parrish celebrates the body often found revolting to other contemporary comics creators.”
“Q. What does that “care” look like?
A. (Eleanor Davis) Caring for other artists is, for me, recommending new people to ADs, demanding less fucked-up lineups in panels and anthologies, asking for better pay & contracts, and signal-boosting work I like. And I try to write the folks I see at shows and events and things, check out their work & then say howdy. But political work is also lifting and care. People need health insurance. Every human being deserves a living wage, to be taken care of when we get old, to be supported when we have kids, to have equal access to education, to have clean water to drink and air to breath, to have safe homes to live in. We deserve to have autonomy over our lives and bodies and to not be terrorized by war or police or ICE. And on and on and on. None of those things will happen by donating to one another’s GoFundMes, or by being “nice.” If we want everyone to be cared for, if we want a just society, it’s too big of a job for us as individuals – we need political power. We need to build systems that take care of everybody. That larger goal would benefit everyone, including the comics and illustration community.
It makes me kind of bonkers when people say “Oh, it’s so tragic that this great artist died unsupported and in poverty” like that’s worse than when all the other unsupported impoverished people die. I don’t feel any more obligation to my community of artists than I do to anyone else. I just have more ability to directly advocate here.”
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From my review “Sealey deftly exposes unending selves without every feeling as if we’re staring at wounds in a voyeuristic way. read it if you think you might love things i love.”
Body Music by Julie Maroh, translated David Homel, July 2
People loving across vignettes. Read this on a university couch after a swim. Felt good for one of the characters who’d just asked to be a partner to a couple.
From Goodreads review “… this is more sci-fi than superhero…Does an amazing job exploring the role of Green Lanterns, and the fascism underlying a group of technocrats ‘bringing order’ to the universe.”
“We is something like a cloud. How big, how thick,
its shape – ambiguous. We is moving across
a magnificent sky. We see the sky all around us but
also we can look down at our own hands.
A cloud is a changing thing. Sometimes we are an animal
smiling, clawing at something
not there. Other times we spread out so thin we almost
don’t exist. We are thickening just now. A sea of slow
knitting. And soon it will rain, and we
will be down in the grass again. A blade of grass gets thirsty;
it’s nice to think we could quench that…”
An early writing teacher Laura Eve Engel shared this one. Loved it, Laura Eve! Engel’s first book Things That Go just came in the mail and am reading now.
“I don’t want to talk of infinitesimal distinctions
between man and man see no difference between men and maidens
I am the modern Morpheus
I made the minutes disappear
I am thin
an errant swarm of bees
a naked lunatic
faithful
selfish
old
a tiger
immensely strong
a wild beast
a paroxysm of rage
mercy
murder
coming
coming
coming
From my review: My new favorite creation story. A comic that imagines the celestial beings that created all life in the known universe are petty af despite their longevity and cosmic abilities.
The Verging Cities by Natalie Scenters-Zapico, August 16-17
Halfway through the Sealey Challenge (an invitation by Nicole Sealey to read 31 poetry books in August) when I read this. I fluttered through these pages at a clip demanding revisitation.
IT’S THE HEAT THAT WAKES US
Five hundred feet away in Juarez. the maquilas
run all night. In EI Paso, we share the same 110
degrees. Angel takes his clothes off and says:
The swamp cooler must be broken. Heat submerges
each building under an ocean thousands of years old.
Heat so thick I wonder what It is to be clean. I swat
but Angel’s lips arc two ghosts rising co the surface
of his skin. He says: I’m dying. He says: Mi amor,
you might be dead. We don’t touch; the heat
from each other’s body is unbearable. I say:
I can’t stop sweating. He says: Become
the body of water to swallow us both.
Bug Boys vol. 1 by Laura Knetzger, July 26- August 28
“If They Should Come for Us” plays at the end of the interview below (transcript here). Also found out one of my dear friends is gonna have a baby!
Empty Set by Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Translated by Christina MacSweeney, August 30-September 3
“The fact is that the things we can’t see don’t hide themselves in the shades of gray or in the white or black, but at the fine line separating those two totalities. A place we can’t even imagine, a horizon of no return.” (18, Empty Set)
I read this one while in Boston based on two poets digging it (thanks Dennis and Hannah). Love reading a short novel in its entirety when visiting another place.
Zanardi by Andrea Pazienza, translated by Alberto Becattini, September 29-30
From my review “Pazienza’s use of multiple art styles, especially absurdist imagery impressed me with their affective quality. You get the impression that these folks are on a different speed of life.”
I finished it and couldn’t believe it had fucked me up as much as it did given its brevity.
From my review “Laura Lannes creates narratives that get at the core of violence and desire without the compulsion to explain any of what’s occurring beyond conveying the overload of the experience.”
Pinkby Kyōko Okazaki, translator(s) unknown, October 11-17
From my review “Though the ending felt predictable, I really enjoyed Okazaki’s sense of humor, and unwillingness to ascribe to a shame narrative regarding the two main character’s occupation as sex workers.”
Someone came in the urgent care waiting room and sat nearby, asked about the book. Wanted to get back into reading once they got their library card; left first.
From ‘I Am Not Ready to Die Yet’
I want to live longer.
I want to love you longer, say it again,
I want to love you longer
& sing that song
again. & get pummeled by the sea
& come up breathing & hot sun
& those walks & those kids
& hard laugh, clap your hands.
I am not ready to die yet.
Read this, along with two other erasure books, on a Friday, this one last. The companion website makes this one of my favorite multimedia projects I saw this year.
From ‘Editor’s Introduction’
“No evidence is now available as to
Authorship
but I came to believe
that the logic of ideas strung together by
the syntactic structure of the sentence
depends on the reader’s context.”
Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, October 16- November 7
Was recommended this one by three comrades on a night we aired grievances. Read several of this aloud while crossing a football field on my way home from work.
Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda, translated by Martha Tennent, November 8-16
“Let suffering be removed but not desire because desire keeps you alive.” (82)
In New York City for the first time, I read chapters of this in Washington Square Park. The fountain was full of folks relaxing. I felt sleepy and cozy.
An incredible experience every time I went in. Would read four to five poems at a time, and everyone is loaded with history and alternately harsh and delicate.
“In the introduction, Soto describes nepantla as “a transient feeling” at the meeting place of Queer and PoC identity. Spanning one hundred years, from the Harlem Renaissance to now, Nepantla is an archive of QTPoC memory that resists both the whiteness of mainstream LGBTQ+ movements and the notion of cistheteronormativity in PoC communities. Fundamentally, it is an act of history-making in verse.”
I never knew how I’d come out of any essay from this collection, wrecked most often. Lucky to read a lot of these on Sunday afternoons with a friend.
“[Marvin Gaye] knew then what so many of us know now: we have to dance, and fight, and make love and fight aid live, and fight all with the same ferocity…There are no half measures to be had.” (101”)
Books I’m still reading that would likely make it on here had I finished them.
“Introduction: Class Politics, 2013” by Steve Parks
“Instead, I would want to argue that while I tried to create arguments which would open up debates about our political responsibilities of our field, I was also a product of my time period – a period in which there was insufficient attention paid to how “our history” was multiple in origin, how a focus on published scholars, professional organizations, and committee reports would actually re-instantiate an absence which was being actively confronted outside the “official discourses” of our field.” (xxiv)
Here, Parks gets at a personal fear of mine regarding publishing any sort of study, the knowledge that my interpretation of information is constrained by the doxa of the time in which I am working. Increasingly I find myself frustrated by a lot of the research I see for the way it approaches text as simple content that circulates without much consideration for materiality, socio-cultural literacies, and scaling. This frustration has led to my own increased desire to produce work that is rigorous in how it uses sources, the extent of its claims, and the intended impact of my work. The result is at present a period of stagnancy that is making any work feel difficult since I see the bar as set so low for how we should be thinking of our research.
Chapter 2: “I Want To Be African” Tracing Black Radical Traditions with “Students’ Rights to Their Own Language” from Carmen Kynard’s Vernacular Insurrections
“The most important thing about walking a tightrope is gettin ovuh to the other side.” (262-263)
This quote is the balm to my feelings on the above park quote. Yesterday I was hanging out with some children, helping them do some beading for a few hours at an event. As time passed, I became increasingly distressed and nervous about how much I was struggling to help kids do things as simple as tie a not large enough to prevent beads from accidentally falling off string. There was one kid, Adam, who repeatedly attempted to string a gorgeous arrangement of beads on a bracelet, and repeatedly they fell on the floor just as he had finished placing the last bead. His patience with himself and the process of crafting floored me, and I was unable to replicate those feelings as a result of being so deeply self-critical. I was so caught up in being the person who could do things well enough to help others that I was unable to focus on the small tasks at hand at any given moment. I was too obsessed with looking like an expert than sharing in learning with the children. In an attempt to cross the tightrope with elegance, I fell to the ground because I was unwilling to use a balance pole for fear of looking like an incompetent adult.
“Chapter 5: The Students’ Rights to Their Own Language, 1972-1974” from Steve Parks’ Class Politics: The Movement for the Students’ Right to Their Own Language
“The image of the nonstandard-dialect speaker that emerges is of either a lazy individual who refuses to learn or an individual so damaged by his or her culture that he or she is unable to learn. In addition, he attaches any opinion that would claim a legitimate status for Black English to the anti-imperialist or class-war ideologues.” (169)
I picked this quote because I continue to feel that this is the barrier that prevents me from more regularly speaking in the dialect I was raised in. I was raised in schools where much like children who speak other languages in this study, we were discouraged from talking Belize Creole during class in order to better practice proper socially mobile ‘proper English.’ Additionally though, I think the barrier for me to speaking Creole in the United States has to do with its linguistic connection to AAVE, and a fear that (because of my phenotype and the general lack of awareness of Belizeans’ use of an English Creole) people may assume that I am simply coopting the linguistic tropes of black Americans. Therefore when I speak Creole in the United States, I am simultaneously concerned that white elites will consider me to be mentally incomptent and that fellow POC will view my speech patterns as an instantiation of using another group’s language to accumulate a specific type of social capital.
“Should Writers Use They Own English” by Vershawn Ashanti Young
“That be hegemony. Internalized oppression. Linguistic self-hate. But we should be mo flexible, mo acceptin of language diversity, language expansion, and creative language usage from ourselves and from others both in formal and informal settings.” (65)
I selected this quote because I loved how it was written. The short sentences that connect the paper’s linguistic response to Stanley Fish to broader ideologies of hegemony and oppression. There is a confidence in those short sentences that reveal a belief that what preceded these sentences was dope, which it was. I felt so much admiration for Young’s confidence throughout this piece, and the way that confidence isn’t built on righteousness, but on compassion, generosity, and skepticism of linguistic hegemony.
“Lessons from Research with Language-Minority Children” by Luis C. Moll and Norma Gonzalez
“We believe that the documentation of funds of knowledge, especially by teachers and students, provides the necessary theoretical and empirical base to continue this work. But, to be frank, we also lament that we have to spend so much of our careers documenting competence, when it should simply be assumed, suggesting that “language-minority” students have the intellectual capabilities of any other children, when it should Simply be acknowledged, and proposing instructional arrangements that capitalize fully on the many strengths they bring into classrooms, when it should simply be their right” (171)
I picked this quote because of the exasperation captured here by Moll and Gonzalez that was more vulnerable than scholars often let themselves be in writing. I truly appreciated the ability for these scholars to lament the need for them to justify the humane intellectual treatment of ‘language minority’ students. I fucking hate it that so much of POC scholars, queer scholars, disabled scholars, and global south scholars spend so much of our labor rationalizing why our ways of being and knowing are valid. We are capable of doing so much more cool shit, but keep being held back by elitist discourses that tell us we need to say why we deserve certain resources. Fuck that discourse. I am from the future, baby. Here, we are doing cool shit. Here, we do not believe in engaging in other people’s fuckery. Here we protect our communities and share labor. Fuck that discourse. I am already free, and we can be free together.
Question: How do we track the progress marginalized communities have made in the United States in linguistic/literacy scholarship while not falling into progress narratives that often don’t account for regression?
Patricia J. Williams “Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights,”
“…for me to understand fully the color my sister saw when she looked at a road involved more than my simply knowing that her ‘purple’ meant my ‘black.’ It required as well as a certain ‘slippage of perception’ that came from my finally experiencing how much her purple felt like my black.” (101)
Delgado “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative,”
“Narrative habits, patterns of seeing, shape what we see and aspire to. These patterns of perception become habitual, tempting us to believe that the way things are is inevitable or the best that can be in an imperfect world. Alternate visions of reality are not explored or, if they are, rejected as extreme or implausible.” (72)
A Plea for Critical Race Theory Counterstory: Stock Story versus Counterstory Dialogues Concerning Alejandra’s “Fit” in the Academy Aja Y. Martinez
“Counterstory as methodology thus serves to expose, analyze, and challenge stock stories of racial privilege and can help to strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survival and resistance.” (38)
“Rhetorical Revolution: Critical Race Counterstorytelling and the Abolition of White Democracy” by Denise Taliaferro Baszile
“Certainly, the problem of capitalism, neoliberalism at present, is far reaching and our efforts to imagine a more just democracy, or “better futures” (Mignolo, 2010) are hindered without any serious consideration of how to rethink the free market mentality that continues to expand the gap between the haves and have-nots. No question about it. However, there is also no reason to believe that capitalism is the only specter of Western domination, and that with its demise all other isms will come tumbling to the ground. There is also always tangled up in the development and progression of capitalism the development of rationalism, racism, sexism, and various other projects of domination, no one more significant than the other (the very idea that there must be one dominant ism to explain domination is in and of itself reflective of the workings of Western rationality).” (247)
ALEJANDRA WRITES A BOOK: A CRITICAL RACE COUNTERSTORY ABOUT WRITING, IDENTITY, AND BEING CHICANX IN THE ACADEMY by Aja Y. Martinez
“It is then the responsibility of the Writing Center, not to liberate underserved students, but to recognize its own complicity within the colonial functioning of the academy, to reflect on these colonial tendencies, and to build resistance and space with underserved students through coalitional practices that centralize the narratives of marginalized students as crucial to best serving their needs in this space.”
Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research Daniel G. Solórzano and Tara J. Yosso
“Counter-storytelling is different from fictional storytelling. We are not developing imaginary characters that engage in fictional scenarios. Instead, the “composite” characters we develop are grounded in real-life experiences and actual empirical data and are contextualized in social situations that are also grounded in real life, not fiction.” (36)
“Of Women Born: Courage and Strength to Survive in the Maquiladoras of Reynosa and Río Bravo, Tamaulipas,” by Elvia Rosales Arriola
“Trade liberalization translated into working conditions that for women routinely brought sexual harassment and physical abuse, violence, mandatory pregnancy testing, and denial of the basic human right to organize collectively to demand better wages and treatment.” (681)
“Converging Stereotypes in Racialized Sexual Harassment: Where the Model Minority Meets Suzie Wong,” by Sumi K. Cho
“To deter harassment such as this, the law should acknowledge the particular white male supremacist logic at work.” (677)
“Máscaras, Trenzas, y Greñas: (Un)Masking the Self While (Un)Braiding Latina Stories and Legal Discourse,” by Margaret E. Montoya
“My clothes signified my ambivalence: Perhaps if I dressed like a lawyer, eventually I would acquire more conventional ideas and ideals and fit in with my peers. Or perhaps if I dressed like a lawyer, I could harbor for some future use the disruptive, and, at times, unwelcome thoughts that entered my head.” (661)
“Stealing Away: Black Women, Outlaw Culture, and the Rhetoric of Rights,” by Monica J. Evans
“Outlaw communities show us how a rights discourse could function without consigning us to disconnected, atomistic autonomous spheres.” (655)
“Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy” by Dorothy E. Roberts
“It is only by affirming the personhood and equality of poor women of color that the survival of their future generations will be ensured.” (405)
Banshee Boardwalk 