Reading is like running: a vehicle for creating something much fucking bigger
on getting back to the basics & building community
This week, I want to get back to the basics of what we are doing here. Watching the news, protesting in the streets, reading articles, having difficult conversations with friends-all of these things remind me that what I do inside Booksh3lf with Christina and what I do with myself in my activism are related. It can sometimes feel easy to say that Booksh3lf is just a fun book blog but it's more than that. When I was in London, I was part of this running crew called Run Dem-they called themselves a running collective and were straight up that if you were here for a running club, then you needed to find the door. They weren’t about PBRs, fast times or even the next race. They ran because that was the vehicle for a much larger thing they were creating-community (w/ a center on Black, queer/LGBTQIA creatives aka if you were white, you were a guest in this community and so respect the code) , ideation, fostering creativity, looking out for one another when shit got ugly. Running was the vehicle because running gave you good endorphins to make you happy and fight depression which was too real in a big city like London. Running was the vehicle also because it was something you could consistently put in your calendar that forced you to gather once a week-short enough to be a reliable cornerstone of your schedule but long enough to allow you to know what was going on with Betty who you only saw at Run Dem. My favorite thing about Run Dem is they’ve mastered the art of meeting new people-the first ten minutes were devoted to finding a new face in the room and making them feel welcome-like they too were home even if it was day 1 or day 657.
I think we model Booksh3lf a lot around Run Dem’s values. Booksh3lf is a community-reading is the vehicle. We are not just a bookclub and we are definitely not here for bragging rights or the next “IT” thing. We created this space to decolonize our hearts, bodies, vaginas, minds and souls. We want to create more conversations where people feel seen when they read the books we recommend in the same way our friends did when they watched Never Have I ever on Netflix or Crazy, Rich Asians in the theatres. We were tired of Dickens and Austin and wanted more Jhumpa Lahiri and Arafat. More than anything, Booksh3lf is built on creating a better world through the books we love and that means empowering yourself with education to get in the streets to protest, to debate those who continue to create harm in this world, to combat our internalized white supremacy that create barriers in the workplace and to remind yourself resistance begins with ourselves and doing the hard work to realize maybe we are not doing enough to fight for the world we want to live in.
I say this as I have watched the news in Palestine with a heavy heart but the courage, confidence and optimism that people are opening their eyes, that through difficult conversation with friends and book recommendations, people are beginning to fight for the world I want for the future. And that might mean we’ll have to get through a lot of ugly shit together but guess what? We are here as a community for when the shit is good and the endorphins are making you glow and when shit gets ugly and you’re not sure which was way is up-and that shit makes me fucking proud of what we are building here.
With lots of love xxxx
Books I wish Read in High School
The Color of Money, Nehrsa Baradaran: money, often times, really does make the world go round or at least, you need to have it to maybe fight this statement? Women of color, especially from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, don’t get enough of that green ass pie --read: racial wealth gap. But to understand the racial wealth gap, you have to understand the segregated economy it was built on.
Read if: you know shit ain't' right when it comes to the economy and POCs (excuse me ya’ll where are those reparations???) but don’t know exactly why or the historical reference? This is your book.
Books where you save yourself
How to Not Die Alone, Logan Ury: say it with me “You can be alone and happy.” You also are allowed to want love, be in love and/or find love even if you’re flying solo atm. But how tf do you get it and keep it? No better person than the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge to break it down. She gives you data-driven blueprints to tell you what makes a relationship work and why, using reason, research and real-life stories.
Read if: you a happy, fulfilled, complete but also sometimes (REAL!) lonely bitch and just curious what the other side holds? Girl grab a book, self-love and you for a lil journey into love land.
On Trend
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, Noura Erakat. Look there are NYT ads happening about Israel/Palesitne, Bella Hadid is out here protesting in the NYC streets and Dua Lipa just got relevant by being dragged for speaking out about palestinian liberation (anyone else smell that her ex Anwar Hadid had an impact? Just me??) so safe to say this shit is trending. Get up to speed with my fav legal analyst Palestinian legal scholar, Noura Erakat. Learn how occupation law has failed the Palestinians and how international law has played a complicated (READ messy and complicit) role in the struggle.
Read if: I only get a few “just read it” megaphones and I’m using it here.
Not your typical eat, pray, love
Ace, What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen, pulling from the personal experience and research, Chen talks about what a lot find taboo and fascinating: asexuality. As the magazine Them put it, she “challenged us to all reframe how we talk about sex.” Sexuality shouldn’t be black and white, one or the other, in this book she also explores how language invokes meaning, understanding, and feeling but the tools we use to describe asexuality are not readily available.
Read if: you believe sexuality is a spectrum and we don’t talk enough about normalizing asexuality—the opposite of our hyper sexual obsessed culture. Also, if you don’t know what queerplatonic relationships are because I didn’t before reading.
Decolonize your mind
MONA Pola Oloixarac; Translated from the Spanish by Adam Morris Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a thought provoking vignette of Mona’s life. Mona is a Peruvian woman whose writing is nominated for an award that brings her to Scandinavia with bougie hipster single minded male writers. There’s an overtone (not undertone) of trauma and IMHO the importance of consent. In the book, she explores her relationships with men, herself, her writing, her sexuality and her work—thinking about how everything is impermanent ya’ll.
Read if: you’re into reading about an imperfect feminist heroine exploring what choices are best for you her in a given moment.
Independent Bookstore Map:
This girl was a Tampa Bae (see what I did there) for the past five days and you know what? Maybe I understand why people like FL. There is sun, there is great Cuban food, there is the beach, there are cute waiters named TJ. You get my drift. Not many POC bookstores here but there is Best Richardson’s African Diaspora Literature and Culture Museum. This bookstore started out in 1997 in Virginia beach, before trading shop for the FL sun. Now they are all changing focus to a historical venture focusing on the African diaspora. So when you too find your Tampa bae, come visit this book shop.