slow reads
Welcome to the Sunday post.
Mommy's El Camino was mentioned in Lisa Locascio Nighthawk's newsletter Not Knowing How. Thanks so much, Lisa.🌷🌿💘
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There are the books I read in quick circulation, usually because I'm compelled by the material, or because they're due at the library in one, two, or three weeks, depending on the book and the library.
Then there are the books I think of as my slow reads. The books that I'm always reading, some of which I started last year, and get to when I get to. They're the ones that might be thicker, more dense with material, sometimes academic, that require a different sort of concentration from me. Silence helps, solitude also helps. In between the fiction and memoirs I read most often are these tomes that put me in a close reading state, that I must slow down to take in. Here are those books.
Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker by Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw
Kara Walker's art is phenomenal, intense, affecting, and I love the premise of creating art of/from "the unspeakable." More and more I find myself gravitating to writing about art other than writing about writing--I feel like there's more for me to learn there than all the writing advice I've already digested (or undigested, as the case may be) in the course of my life.
Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer by Phyllis Bennis
I've been borrowing and renewing and putting on hold and renewing this book over and over since November 2023. Composed of six parts, using a simple question and answer format, multiple questions are asked and answered. Examples include (the first question in part I), "Why is there so much violence in the Middle East?", (from Part II) "How does the US support Israel?", (from Part III) "What was the Oslo process?", and (from Part IV) "What was the first "intifada" all about?" The wildest part of reading this is that so much of what is currently happening has all happened before in different iterations. I read it and think, This is happening now. Again. And I read it with the hope of Palestine being free from oppression and occupation.
Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman
I bought this book when it came out--an intimidating hardcover of 702 pages (there's a paperback edition out now). I'm a fan of Sarah Schulman--I've read a few of her other books, including Conflict Is Not Abuse, which I keep on a special bookshelf where I put the books I want on my constant eye-level to dip into and reread. I'm also devoted to Sarah because at a particularly difficult time for me, she told me I could call her, and I did. What other writers you don't know do this, can do this, offer this? I think of her whenever I contemplate starting a mini-writers workshop--she wrote of the kind she used to offer outside of academia that is the closest to what I would consider if I were to ever do such a thing. And of course there is the story of Act Up that urges me on here--as someone who used to be way more active in the streets than I am currently, I love reading about the potential for subversion using creative and impactful methods. One day...
A Field Guide to White Supremacy, edited by Kathleen Belew and Ramón A. Gutiérrez
A number of researchers and writers contributed to this book that is described as "an urgent resource for journalists, activists, policymakers, and citizens, illuminating common threads in white supremacist actions at every scale, from hate crimes and mass attacks to policy and law." When the mainstream news media downplays so much of what has been curdling and erupting since 2016 (and before, of course, but especially since then), reporting as though horrific events are not connected when they actually are (gaslighting in the New York Times, for example), this book is like a constant touchstone with reality. I am not crazy, I am not imagining this, this book reminds me. And most importantly: I am not alone in what I'm seeing and understanding.
Do you have slow reads? If so, what are they?